“I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again,” Karla said with a tut and a shake of her head.
Leon gave her a sympathetic look before leading the way, with Rose and Jamie right after him. I went last, taking one last look at Alexa, who was looking sullen. Trent had walked over to stand next to her and he was saying something, low and soft.
It only took us a few moments to make it to the store Rose had seen. We grabbed large waffle-knit-type bags and filled them with rolled-up travel blankets and pint-sized pillows, the kind you’d expect to be labeled “for toddler use.”
“This’ll have to be enough,” Rose said, stuffing the last available burgundy-hued blanket into the bag she was carrying. “I got a small first aid kit too,” she whispered to me, and I nodded gratefully.
“Do you think we have enough food to make it through? I know Nolan and Trent grabbed quite a bit of water and stuff.” I looked around, seeing what was in the vicinity.
“You guys were holed up in a restaurant, right?” Rose questioned, her gaze following my finger when I pointed in the direction of the sports bar, a place that I wasn’t too keen on revisiting. “I’m sure they’d have some stuff, right? Maybe some bar snacks or something.”
“Yeah, refrigerated stuff that we wouldn’t need to cook too, I’d think,” I agreed.
“Alexa hasn’t had anything to eat since we flew out of Illinois,” Jamie said. “She’s been so mad at me, she refused to eat lunch on the plane. She really hates the idea of moving out here.” He paused, gave sort of a sad half-grin. “Guess maybe she was right about that. I’m not loving California myself so far.”
“Well, you’re definitely not seeing the state at its best.” I felt a wave of depression move through me. I pushed it back and put up a mental dam. “Right, then let’s find her something to eat,” I said, heading toward the bar despite my ill feelings toward the body count we’d left the last time we were there.
We walked in a somewhat comfortable silence. I didn’t really know Leon or Jamie from Adam’s house cat, but Rose seemed to have built a fast fondness for the former. They were walking relatively close to one another and I felt a pang of jealousy. This whole situation was still new, brand spanking new, but knowing the other woman was by my side made things feel okay. Well, as okay as they could feel, considering there were a bunch of royally fucked-up people craving brains.
“It’s right up here.” I was leading the way then, tiptoeing around inert bodies. I could see the pileup in the near distance, the small hill of zombie horde we’d slaughtered earlier. I’d felt queasy before, but now I felt downright sick. As we got closer, the stench of the bodies hit my face. It was terrible, way worse than normal decomp warranted. It was like the bodies had been left out in the desert heat, piled up on a blacktop road, rotting at a lightning-fast rate.
It was sulfur and bile and blood, rolled into a soggy meatloaf sandwich.
“Fucking hell, that’s disgusting.” Rose pinched her nose, holding her lips pressed firmly together to keep from being sick. Leon and Jamie were pale in the face, staring at the pile of bodies and also looking nauseous. They were holding back the dam though. I couldn’t.
I ran from the group and gripped my hands around the steel rim of a large trashcan. I was thankful I didn’t have much in my system—a little orange milkshake and a bit of cracker from the plane—because I think I would have been sick for much longer had that not been the case. Even after I’d expelled every morsel in my body, I still dry-heaved.
Perhaps it was sickness from the decomposing bodies, or the fact that we’d slaughtered those things earlier. Or maybe it was the devastation of the situation I was currently in that was turning my stomach to mush. I tried not to think the next thought, but I couldn’t help myself.
Maybe it was the injury I’d sustained earlier. Maybe it was making me sick. God, I hoped not. The worry of it banged in my chest like a wild racquetball.
During my bout of sickness, a hand had gently pulled my hair away from my face and held it back. The touch hadn’t registered while I was being ill, but now it did. I wiped my mouth roughly on the collar of the my bloodied tracksuit and I turned around to find Rose, her grip falling away from the ponytail she’d held in place for me.
“Thanks,” I muttered, feeling embarrassed.
“I’m barely holding it together myself too,” she comforted.
Leon and Jamie were standing a yard or so away from us, their gazes moving about the room, trying not to settle on us for too long. Maybe they were like my dad—he couldn’t stand the sight of someone being sick. If he saw it, he’d be sick himself. Then it would be a puke explosion.
We moved back to the bodies until we were standing in front of them, directly facing the arched entrance of the restaurant, which looked empty at a glance.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s come here since we were holed up.” I looked down at the bodies again, this time with my hand clamped firmly over my lower face. I could still smell them though, oozing and starting to get that paleness to them as the blood rushed to whatever part was lowest to the ground. Death and gravity: they always walked hand in hand.
I stepped over the bodies, my foot sinking in between two and my heart racing as I worried about getting scratched by a post-mortem zombie. Would that still make me ill? I seemed to have survived my first wound…hadn’t I?
Whatever happened tomorrow, to me or to the world, those bodies were going to need to be moved somewhere else.
Preferably somewhere very far away.
We filled several to-go bags with pop-top canned food that would last and also some items that wouldn’t—like blocks of cheddar, cottage cheese, and a few premade salads. It didn’t seem like much, if we measured by pre-apocalypse standards, but I had a feeling that this was going to seem like a bounty to everyone back up in the security room. Hell, the real worry was that the world would stay this way and the idea of a “feast” would continue to shrink.
Because deep down in my gut, I had a feeling that the world wasn’t going to recover. Not instantly, and maybe not ever.
Nolan gave us shit for taking longer than he expected, but he seemed happy with the extras we’d obtained while out. He snagged a can of baked beans, and I wanted to tell him to go to hell when he also asked for some cheddar. I didn’t, of course; he was just one of those people that got under my skin. Or maybe, after Travis, I was just sick of obnoxious men who liked to push me around.
“What do you want, Alexa?” I was standing in front of the girl. Her father watched her, waiting for her to make a choice before he took anything. I couldn’t imagine being a parent in the middle of all of this…the level of fear must have been suffocating.
“I’m not hungry,” Alexa said, and looked away from me stubbornly.
“You have to eat something,” Jamie said, looking concerned. “How about one of the salads? Ham and beets. Chicken Caesar. Um. This one’s got beef and tortilla strips.”
“They all have meat.” Alexa grimaced. “You know I don’t eat that.”
“Right, right. She’s been a vegetarian ever since she saw this documentary on how pigs are killed for bacon. Shame, since it ruined the tradition of Saturday bacon and pancakes made with the grease.”
“Ugh. Dad!” Alexa scoffed, grabbing for one of the individual snack cups I was holding. “Fine, I’ll eat some cottage cheese. As long as you shut up about grease and bacon.”
“Sure, can do,” Jamie said, and a hint of a smile quirked his mouth as he reached forward and took the taco salad from me.
I grinned as I walked away from them, realizing that Jamie had played one of the oldest parenting tricks in the book. My dad used to do that too—convince me to do something by giving me an even worse option.
“That going to be enough for you?” I took the empty seat next to Rose, who was sitting in front of the large bank of monitors, watching for trouble while popping potato chips into her mouth.
She nodded, talking around a mouthful of food. �
��I’m not really that hungry. The end of the world as I know it kind of ruined my appetite, but I figured I should eat something, and crisps seemed a quick fix for now.”
“Crisps?” I asked with a smirk.
She picked up another potato chip. “Yeah, crisps,” she said before popping it in her mouth and crunching down on it.
“That’s a potato chip,” I said, snagging one for myself.
She shrugged and shoved another chip in her mouth, biting down on it noisily. “No, chips are like…I don’t know, potato that’s long and sliced and fried, I guess…”
“You mean fries?”
“What?” Rose laughed. “I mean, sure there are fries, but chips are just a fries fatter cousin. These are crisps.”
I laughed with her, and god, it felt good to laugh at something. It felt like weeks since I’d laughed. “I have no idea what you’re going on about, Rose.”
“Americans are so weird.” She winked. “I tell you though, I’d kill for a cup of tea and a bourbon.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Bourbon…and tea?”
“Yeah, it’s delicious.”
I frowned and Rose laughed, the sound carefree. “My dad and I used to break the top off them and then scrape the chocolate out of the middle.” She smiled at the memory and I smirked, realizing that we were talking about two different things.
“You mean a cookie?” I asked. “I thought you were talking about liquor.”
She laughed back. “No, a biscuit.”
“A biscuit?”
“Yeah, crunchy and perfectly dunkable in cups of tea…” Rose shrugged.
“So, a cookie then.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, cookies are softer. Like chocolate chip cookies. Biscuits are crunchy.”
“That’s not a biscuit, that’s a damn cookie.” I chuckled lightly. “Biscuits are soft, unless they’re dog biscuits of course…”
“What are you talking about?” Rose snorted on a laugh and I rolled my eyes.
“Biscuits are like a bread roll, and they have like a white sausage gravy on them, and…”
Rose grimaced, though she was still laughing. “That sounds disgusting!”
“You Brits are so weird.”
Rose laughed back. “Whatever. Then we’d dip our crunchy, not-sausage-gravy-covered, sweet biscuit in our tea until it went soggy. Mum would go mad because we’d get crumbs everywhere.” She chuckled and then grief flitted across her features, her forehead creasing. “I’m never going to see them again, am I, Sam?”
I wanted to give her something to hold on to, some form of positivity, but it would be a lie, because I had no idea if she’d see her family again. Or if the world we knew would ever be the same again. I didn’t have what Rose had—living parents to worry about me. I’d never felt so untethered, so alone in the world, as I did then.
My gaze flicked over to Jamie and Alexa and a pang of jealousy rocketed through my body. Everyone had someone. I’d have someone too, if Travis hadn’t been such a pathetic, hurtful dick.
I looked over at Rose and realized that we may have felt alone, but at least we were alone together. Neither of us had anyone but each other, and I felt an even stronger bond with her.
“For me”—I pushed the sadness away and opened the cottage cheese I was holding—“it would be my dad’s cheeseburgers. They were amazing.”
“Urghhh, I’d kill for a burger right now. No cheese though, because I hate that plastic cheese.” She fake gagged and popped another chip into her mouth.
We slipped back into silence as we ate, our eyes roving the television screens, and ignored the rest of the chatter happening behind us. After a while, our food long-finished, things quieted and we turned around to find everyone unrolling blankets and doling out pillows. Alexa was curled up on the floor, her head on her dad’s lap. Jamie’s eyes were already closed too, his back to the wall and his arm protectively around his daughter. The sight made me say a little prayer that the duo would survive. They deserved to.
Rose got up to go and speak with Leon, who had claimed his own little corner of the room and was reading a small paperback. I’m not sure where he got it; maybe he already had it, as it looked wrinkled and worn.
Nolan had chosen a position next to the door and the desk that was once again pushed against it as a barrier. Karla, for her part, was already asleep—and she definitely wasn’t faking it, because her snoring could have woken a grizzly in winter hibernation. I wondered if it could be heard through the walls of our little haven, and if so, would it attract any danger?
No…we’d closed the door. We were safe now.
I was about to look at the monitors when my eyes landed on Trent. He looked out of it, his eyes sort of glaze -over. It was the expression a druggie takes on after a good hit. I knew, because I’d seen some of my fellow dancers use to escape the rigor of our lifestyle. He didn’t have any drugs though—not that I knew of. When he didn’t move his head or even really blink, I followed his gaze to see what had him so entranced, and my stomach lurched in worry, though my brain and my emotions couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong with the situation.
When Rose came back and sat down, I opened my mouth to tell her what I suspected. Someone else needed to know about Trent, in case something happened to me.
Before I could open my mouth, though, she pointed at one of the monitors. “Holy crap.” She looked down at the controls and fumbled with them. “Karla!” she exclaimed and, to my surprise, the woman startled up like she was ready to kick ass and take names.
“What! Is there trouble?” She already had her baton in her hand at the ready.
“No, Karla. Just come here. There’s someone on the screen. Someone human, I mean.” Rose was still fiddling with controls and was finally was able to blow up the image so it took up a whole monitor instead of a quarter. “Here, him!” She jabbed at the screen frantically, making sure we all saw.
I stared in disbelief at the man on the monitor. He was pacing the small, windowless room. We hadn’t noticed him earlier. Maybe he’d been asleep, stretched out on the metal bed mounted to the wall. Immobile, he would be easy to miss. Or some of us had noticed him but assumed that if he was motionless, then he was already dead. Now, though, he was up and moving, and not in a hungry I-want-to-eat-your-brains kind of way, but in a someone-needs-to-get-me-the-hell-out-of-here way, because something is really fucking wrong in this airport.
“Where is this? We have to go help him.” Rose pushed back out of her chair and turned to Karla.
Karla made her way over, yawning and looking a bit grumpy that she hadn’t been woken for real danger, but when she saw what Rose was talking about, her eyes widened. “Oh, no way, no how. Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “He’s locked up, and for a good damn reason, no doubt. You damn crazy if you thinking we need to save him.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, leaning forward so I could get a better look at the guy on the screen.
“He’s in airport lockup. TSA sends out these alerts to security, God, and everybody if there’s someone we all need to be on high alert over. I got the notice before arriving to work and finding hell on earth. That guy tried to get on a plane to Amsterdam and his face set off a whole mess of alerts. LAPD is supposed to be coming to get him. Then he’ll probably go to the Feds.” Karla had her hands on her hips.
“What in God’s name is he wanted for?” Leon was leaning over Rose’s shoulder, also looking now.
“No idea. It’s always the bad ones that don’t have anything on record though. No, we need to leave him right where the hell he is until help comes,” Karla said, and started back to her makeshift bed. “They can deal with him. That is definitely not in my job description.”
Rose and I looked at each other. There were monsters, real monsters, roaming the airport and the city and maybe the world. Even if he was a bad man, maybe he’d also be useful. And seriously, how bad could he be?
I thought briefly of all the guns that had been confiscated from passenge
rs, and worry clawed at me.
“Maybe he could help though.” I shrugged. “I mean, he’s human and he’s obviously…I don’t know, some sort of criminal maybe, but what if he’s also some like a super-agent who could kill a dozen zombies with a single bullet?” I knew how stupid I sounded, but I kept on talking anyway. “We could use someone like that. Couldn’t we?”
“Don’t be a dumbass.” It was Nolan now. Everyone was getting up to come to the monitors and join the conversation—a conversation that was becoming increasingly more heated. “We don’t need a criminal on our side.”
“What do we really know about each other?” Rose spoke up, standing and turning around to lean against the controls table. “You, Nolan, who are you? What do you do for a living? How do we know you’re not some serial killer on a vacation?”
“I’m certainly not a fucking—”
Leon cut him off, “No, Rose is right. We don’t know each other, and we don’t know this guy either. What I do know is that we can’t leave someone in a cell when the whole world is going to shit. What if no one comes for him? What if he dies in there from starvation and we could have done something about it?”
“Y’all be crazy.” Karla threw her hands up in the air in defeat and plodded over to sit down. “Totally crazy.”
“Crazy or not,” I said, “I agree with Leon.”
“Me too,” Jamie spoke quietly, perhaps to not wake up Alexa, who was still resting against his body. “I don’t like it, but we can’t leave him to starve in there.”
“So we take him some food and water!” Karla said, her eyes wide. “You don’t go letting criminals out just because—”
“Just because what? Because the world as we know it seems to be ending? Because it’s being taken over by brain-hungry fucking zombies?” Rose yelled. She was angry, angrier than I’d seen her before, and Karla looked taken aback by the outburst.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Nolan grunted, looking irritated that the group wasn’t following his assumed leadership.
Red Eye | Season 1 | Episode 2 Page 8