by L. D. King
The four of them kept to the center of the street. Today, at least, they would not be the first ones who would be killed today. Jerry knew that their luck would not last for much longer. The creatures were making fast work of people on the street. Most of the attacks were carried out by more than one creature. This made the things even more dangerous.
The creatures focused on killing one person after another. They had attacked between 60 and 80 people the previous night and had killed every single one of them.
The four teenagers were doing fine for now. They kept an eye out for where the creatures were, but they could see that there were more creatures on the street than when they first started to attack people two hours ago.
These creatures, like all the creatures around the world, later dubbed ‘zombies,’ did not move very quickly. They stumbled, walked or staggered at a slow pace. The people who were being killed didn’t pay much attention to where they were running. They just ran, and some ran directly into the creatures. Those people paid dearly with their lives.
By this time, the shadows had shifted from one side of the street to the other. Later that day, as the sun started to go down, the four teenagers knew that they needed to find a safe place for the night. As they walked in the center of the street, they came upon an upscale department store that looked empty. The doors of the building were cracked open just a bit. Jerry was the first to realize that they needed to get off the street quickly. He called to the others, “Guys, come look at this. This store is wide open. I don’t see anyone inside. We need to find somewhere to hole up before it gets dark. Come with me to see if we can find a safe place in here.”
They went inside, carefully watching to see if there were any of the murderous monsters inside.
“Jerry,” called Mike. “Look at this room. What do you think?”
“This looks like it’ll work for us. The door is solid. There are no windows or other doors. We can be safe in here. Come on, girls, let’s go. This is where we’ll spend the night.”
“Jerry, are you out of your mind?” said Jennifer. “This place gives me the creeps. There are no beds, no windows, no bathrooms… nothing. Tell me again why we’re staying in here?”
“Jennifer, we are staying in this room so we don’t wind up dead tonight. Is that a good enough reason for you?”
“Okay, Jerry. What if we have to use the bathroom or something? And where are we going to sleep?”
“We’re gonna take all of the clothes off the racks just outside the room and use them to make beds. If we have to go to the bathroom, we’ll just have to go back there in the corner. Either that or we can just sit out here on those couches and see if we get killed being out in the open. I hear the night manager is one of those creatures.”
“Jerry, just because you were… are in ROTC doesn’t put you in charge,” said Jennifer. “I might just sleep out here. Mary will stay with me, won’t you, Mary?”
“Jennifer are you insane? I’m going to go where Jerry goes. I trust him. He’s the only one of us that has any training at all. If that means I have to pee in the corner, so be it. I’ll be alive while I pee. What about you? Are you going to stay out here by yourself? Do you think Mike is gonna stay out here? Look, he’s already making a bed.”
“Mary, why do you always have to point out that Jerry is always right? Mike’s just as smart as Jerry.”
“Jen, I’m with Jerry, in this case,” said Mary. “I’m scared out of my mind. I don’t know what to do. For right now, I’m doing what Jerry tells me to. If you want to stay out here, then you’re gonna be by yourself. We’re going to close the door and block it until morning.”
“Okay, fine. Jerry, you’re right,” said Jen. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s about what will work best for us right now,” said Jerry. “I think this is the best thing that we have going for us. If you ever think I'm wrong, please tell me so. I’m certainly not perfect. So if we’re going to agree to stay here, then we have some work to do before it gets dark.”
With that conversation done, they cautiously entered the room to make sure it was safe. They looked for creatures in the shadows of the room. Finding none, they closed and locked the door. The good news was that the electricity was still on, so they had lights, for now. They made beds out of the clothes. They set up a small wall back in the corner for a bathroom. They ate their cold hot dogs and the last of their candy. Lying down for the night, they knew that tomorrow it would start all over again, but tonight they were safe.
Their goal was still the Grand Central railroad terminal. As they closed their eyes to go to sleep, they didn’t know that they had passed Grand Central Station several miles back, and that missing the terminal wouldn’t mean much to them even if they could find it, since the trains had stopped running the day before.
They soon found there was no viable transportation. The days turned into weeks. Each day brought more of the same thing: Run towards home during the day. Find a safe hiding place at night. The only good thing about this was that the screams at night had fallen off. During their trip, they met various groups of people. The people who had survived the first week of the zombie attacks had learned to be very cautious of their actions. Knowing what they did could result in their deaths if they weren’t careful.
By this time, the electricity had failed. With it went the running water. Now water was a prized commodity. The police and firefighters had vanished as well. One day they came upon a stretch of buildings that had caught fire. They saw that the buildings had burned to the ground.
Occasionally they found would find a little food that they gathered up. They rationed it to make it go farther. When they found water, they rationed that well. When it rained, they set out tarps or plastic sheets to capture the water. They found small, one- or two-gallon water jugs to carry their water. The worst thing was the lack of food.
For the last sixty days they had endured as they walked step by step closer to home back in East Norwich, Long Island. Sixty days ago, eight teenagers sneaked off to New York City for a late summer pre-senior year vacation. Now, sixty days later, Stan and Rosie were dead. Unbeknownst to the four, their other friends Teddy and Cori had been turned into the very things that they were fleeing from, the very things that had been killing every person they could. They now belonged to the zombies. Now there were only four that remained of the original group of eight.
Night had fallen again. They couldn’t get very far at night. Along with the zombies, there was another enemy they feared: Gangs of thugs that would kill for something to eat.
Having finally found the Brooklyn Bridge, they stopped for the night just past the bridge, in the Brooklyn Historical Society building. By the end of the next day, they were still in Brooklyn, in a building on Atlantic Avenue just east of Nostrand. The four teenagers had only managed to walk a total of 26 miles in the 60 days. They still had nearly 14 miles to go to get to their homes in East Norwich.
It was getting late in the afternoon. They were tired. All they were managing to do so far was hide from the zombies and the gangs of thugs. With all of these diversions, they could not walk very far each day. This afternoon they had walked east on Atlantic Avenue from Nostrand to Sheffield Avenue, a distance of about a mile and a half. They found a suitable place that they could secure for the night, and decided to stay there for the night. They had gotten out of the commercial area of Brooklyn into a small business and residential part of the city. The side streets led to single family housing. All of them were deserted like the businesses.
They took the time to break into some of businesses and homes that they came upon, looking for food, water and clothing. As the days wore on, it had gotten colder, and all they had was the clothes on their backs. Foraging took time —time that they should have been using to walk towards home. Without food, water or adequate clothing, however, they were not going to get home. They found that there was not much food to be had. Other survivo
rs had gotten to most of the available food long before them.
What meager food they did find was not enough to fill them. They were always hungry. They had not eaten more than a few bites each over the last 40-plus hours. They were hungry — not just the ordinary average teenager hungry, but rather a nearly starving hungry.
For now, the building they were resting in was secure, which was a good thing, but the luxury of good food would have been such a wonderful treat to add to their day.
Their plan to walk back East Norwich was well under way. All they had to do was walk another 14 miles. From the start, they knew it would be a long walk. Unfortunately for them, there was no other way to get home. Five days ago, outside Garden City, they came upon another group of three. Mike was the first to see them. He nudged Jerry, holding a finger to his lips to indicate quiet. He pointed towards the three, who were coming out of a building across the street from them. Jerry leaned in to Mike, whispering in his ear, “They’re looking for food, like us. I don’t think they’ve seen us yet. I’m going to walk over and greet them. Are you good with that?”
“Dude, that’s fine with me. Just be careful.”
Jerry walked into the street in front of the building where the others were. He stood there until they came out. When they saw him, everyone stopped. Jerry called out to them.
“Hey, man. How are you? My name is Jerry. We don’t want to hurt you. There are four of us. I see that there are three of you. Can we talk?”
The other group stopped, seeming uncertain. They seemed to be whispering among themselves. Then one of them spoke up. “Yeah, if you want. I’ll come to you, if you stay right there. These two will go back into the building while we talk.”
The other man walked out to meet Jerry. Jerry offered his hand to shake. The other man did the same.
“Hi. Like I said, my name is Jerry. We’re just trying to get back home. What about you? How are you guys doing?”
“We’re okay. I’m Gary. We’re from Queens. We’re just out looking for food or whatever we can find to keep going another day.”
“It’s good to meet you, Gary. We’re from East Norwich, out on Long Island. We were in Harlem when the zombie thing happened. We’ve been trying to get back ever since. There are four of us. Mike, his girlfriend Jennifer, and my girlfriend Mary. They’re over there in that other building, waiting for us to finish talking. What about you guys?”
“There’s only three of us. The other two are Kurt and Derek. We really don’t plan on leaving this area. We’re going to try to tough it out until help gets here. We were gonna try to find a place for tonight. Do you mind if we camp with you guys? We have enough food for everyone to have a good dinner.”
“I’m fine with that. Let me go ask the others… if they’re okay with it, I’ll give you a wave.”
Jerry went back to talk with the other three. He gave them a quick rundown, and explained that the other group was willing to share their food. They decided to take the other group up on their offer, but planned to sleep between the new group and the girls in order to try to keep them safe.
Jerry waved the other group over. As they walked into the building, Jerry showed them the area they had secured for sleeping. Then they all introduced themselves.
Gary explained that they had been going up on the roofs of buildings to build a cooking fire. He introduced Kurt as an excellent cook, and explained that they had food enough for all.
“I hope you enjoy my cooking,” said Kurt.
“Looking forward to it,” said Jerry. We really want to thank you for offering to share your food. We haven’t had a good meal in four days or more. We do have plenty of water, so drink as much as you like. In the morning, we’ll give you enough to get back to Queens.”
“Thanks,” said Gary.
“Okay, everyone knows where they are going to be tonight,” said Jerry. “We all have a job to do. Let’s all get to work. Mike and Gary, can you help me lock this place up for tonight?”
“Sure thing,” said Mike. “I can’t wait for dinner. Like Jerry said, we haven’t had a good meal in four days. We have a bite of food now and then, but that’s it.”
Mike said, “Well, you should eat good tonight.”
A few of the guys went around checking the windows and doors.
Mike looked at Gary and said, “I have a question.”
“Sure,” Gary said.
“We walked here all the way from Harlem, and, you know, you see a lot of graffiti everywhere,” said Mike.
“Uh-huh?” Gary replied.
“Most of the tags are gang-related or they’re just rude, you know, ‘Bite Me’ or ‘For A Good Time Call 867-5309,’ or sometimes they have something to do with the outbreak.”
“Yeah,” said Gary. “Typical stuff.”
“But there was one we saw a few times that was confusing,” Mike continued. “It wasn’t like the typical gang tags, hard to read. It seemed to be spray painted really carefully so it was easy to make out what it said. It was on the side of a building as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, in letters about two feet tall. It was also on the railroad overpass we passed when we were on Atlantic Avenue.”
“Yeah?” Gary listened closely.
“Then I just saw it when I was checking one of the windows over there” — he poined to the west side of the room — “on the side of a bank building just down the street. It always said the same thing: Survive with The Guardians. It was always pretty much the same each time we saw it. What do you think that’s supposed to mean?”
“Yeah,” said Gary. “We’ve seen that on buildings, overpasses and rooftops, here and there all over. No idea what it means. Anyway, I think dinner’s about ready. Are you hungry? I say we need to eat and not worry about gang tags.”
Jerry and Kurt had gone up on the roof with the food and built a fire for Kurt to cook with. The girls and Derek rearranged the room to make a place for everyone to sleep, while Gary and Mike were checking the locks to make sure the building was safe.
Before long, dinner was ready, and everyone ate their fill. All they had was water with which to wash it down, but this was the first decent food that they’d had in days. The teens shared their water freely with the three that needed it. They combined their resources to make a good meal for all of them.
With warm food in their bellies, they lay down to sleep. It had been many days since they had slept this well. Jerry was the last of the four to fall asleep. It had been a long time since he felt full, and he glanced around the room, checking one last time that everything was secure as he drifted off to sleep.
The sun had been up about an hour when Mike awoke. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and looked around slowly. In his half-asleep state, he looked around the room. Suddenly it hit him. He was not ready for what he was seeing. He jumped up, shouting at everyone.
“Damn it! Everyone get up! Get up now! Oh, my god! Jerry, look! Where’d they go? They’re gone, and the door is standing wide open. Damn it, Jerry! They took all of our stuff, including our water! They did not leave us any water! If I find those guys, I’m going to kill them, damn it!”
“Mike, shut up! We don’t want to attract any zombies. Go lock the door, right now. They’re gone. We can’t do anything about it now. We need to make sure we’re safe. That’s rule number one. Everything else follows that. I’ll get the girls up.”
He woke the two girls and filled them in on what had happened.
“Those three guys took everything we had. I’m going up on the roof to see if I can see them. I doubt that I can, but I have to try.”
“I can’t believe they would screw us over like that!” said Jennifer.
The four of them were alone again. If being alone wasn’t bad enough, what little food they’d had, along with all of their water, had been taken. The three men that they had shared their safe building with had stolen the food and water they had needed to survive, and left the door standing wide open for the zombies.
If the four of them could survive today, from this point forward they wouldn’t trust anyone so quickly, ever again. As they gathered together, Jerry said, “I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want to walk anywhere today. I want to stay here for right now. I might go out to look for food or water, but not right now. What do you think?”
“If they come back, I’m going to kill them,” Mike growled. “I’ll beat them with my damn club until they are dead. Jerry, we trusted them. They didn’t have to treat us like that. They’re nothing but thugs. All they wanted to do was take everything they could. I’ll bet they hoped that we would be caught by the zombies.”
“I don’t know how to feel anymore,” said Mary. “I can’t believe anybody would do something like that to another human being. When we left Manhattan, I was hoping we’d left the monsters behind us. I guess we need to think about who we let in from now on.”
“Mary, it’s not your fault. I was the one who talked to them first. It’s my fault. It’s not your fault, Mary, or yours, Jen, or yours either, Mike. It’s all my fault. I need to make it better.”
“Okay, Jerry. Enough,” said Mike. “You’ve beat yourself up enough. It’s both our faults. The girls will do whatever we do. They trust us to make the right decisions. We both let them down. It might cost us later. We don’t have any food or water. Yesterday we did not have any food, but we had water. The best way to look at this is that we got a good meal out of it.”
There was a moment of silence as Jerry thought about what Mike had said. “Thanks, Mike. I think from now on we need to have a night watch. We already know we need a safe place to stay every night. Now we know we also have to watch for humans that mean us harm. If we’re forced into a corner, we need to be able to do what it takes to be the ones that survive, even if that means we have to kill another human being.”