Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 3)

by L. C. Mortimer

  For weeks after he died, Alice would sneak into Timmy’s room when no one was looking and just lay in his bed. She would wrap herself in his blanket and close her eyes and pretend he was still there. She would talk to him, whisper in the darkness until she passed out.

  When she woke, she’d sneak back to her room before Mom could find her and catch her. She’d sneak back before her parents would yell at her for going into Timothy’s space, into his private chambers. She’s sneak away before the world could close in on her again.

  Alice noticed that people were different to her after her brother died. It wasn’t just her parents. It was everyone. Her parents were the worst, of course, because she lived with them. Alice’s teachers treated her differently, too, though. They were almost delicate with her. Her friends pulled away and stopped talking to her as much. No one invited her to parties anymore. No one seemed to know what to say to her.

  She wished they wouldn’t be that way.

  She wished they would just be normal.

  When you lose someone, the last thing you need is for everyone else to treat you like you’re going to break. If enough people think you’re fucked up, you start to wonder if it’s true. If enough people stop talking to you, stop looking at you, stop noticing you exist, you begin to wonder if you’re the one who died.

  Alice wasn’t broken; she was ignored, and there was a difference.

  And now she was stuck in a world of the dead and the only thing she had was time. She had all the time in the world to miss her brother. She had all the time in the world to think that if only he was here with her, things wouldn’t seem so damn dark.

  When Mark and Kyle came back to the car a few minutes later, she slumped in her seat and waited for them to load up the backseat with the new supplies they’d found. Kyle’s car was almost out of gas, so they left it behind. He hopped in the backseat of this one and Mark got behind the wheel.

  “Buckle up,” Mark said. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

  Chapter 2

  Kyle ran his fingers over the spine of the book he’d found. They didn’t need books right now. They needed a place to live and food and water and a fucking plan, but they didn’t have that. They didn’t have any of that. Those were the things they needed, but all he had was the novel.

  They needed things that would keep them alive, things that would keep their bodies moving. They needed things that would help them keep moving forward. They needed things that would keep them safe.

  A book wouldn’t do that.

  Kyle understood.

  Still, he couldn’t resist the weathered paperback. It reminded him of normalcy, reminded him of living in a time when the world wasn’t complete fucking garbage. He wanted to believe that things weren’t as bad as he thought they were, that this was some sort of huge misunderstanding.

  He wanted to believe that they’d get to another town and find people walking around and that everyone would be like, “Surprise! Things aren’t as bad as you thought! Also, there is a cure. Here’s a shot.”

  He wanted to believe.

  He didn’t have much hope, or any at all, really, but he had the book, so he held it tight. It was a lifeline for him now. It was something that kept him from jumping out of the car, from hoping an Infected would find him and just put him out of his misery. It kept him from despairing that this really was all he had left in the world.

  Kyle wanted something. He needed something. Anything. He thought of the world he lived in last week and he thought of the world he lived in now. He’d wasted so much time in his life feeling dissatisfied with the way things were. He’d spent so much time trying to change the world, but then it went and changed.

  It didn’t change in the way he wanted, but it changed.

  The world completely flipped on its hinges and there was no way to stop it, no way to control any of it.

  He wished they could go back. How bad had things really been, anyway? So he didn’t have the best job or the best apartment or the best paycheck. Anything would be better than this hell they’d be living in. Anything would be better than what they were going through now.

  He leaned against the musty backseat of the Honda and wondered what the hell they’d gotten themselves into. Alice was practically catatonic. Mark had talked to Kyle about it while they went together through the house. He’d explained she needed time to cope, that she was having a hard time with the changes around them.

  They all were.

  Mark might baby Alice a little, which was fine, but Kyle was under no impression that Mark was doing okay himself. Kyle sure as hell wasn’t. Who would be in a situation like this? Who could see the dead come back to life and just act like everything was business as usual? Who could see their loved ones torn apart and think they’d ever be okay again?

  “Everyone deals with shock and grief differently,” Mark had said, and Kyle knew it was true. He knew it from his own life well enough. He’d been just as shocked as Alice to see the Infected child dead in the crib. He’d been just as shocked, just as surprised, but he hadn’t freaked out. Maybe he should have. Maybe it meant he was heartless that he didn’t.

  When someone freaked out so completely over seeing something like that, when their body just shut down, it was because a memory had been triggered.

  At least, that was Mark’s theory.

  Kyle didn’t know if it was bullshit or not.

  Alice’s brother died a few years ago. It had been maybe seven years since he’d passed. Kyle met Alice when she was finishing up college, when she was getting ready to start her job at the law firm. She’d gotten used to life with Timothy by that point. At least, she seemed like she had when they first met. After awhile, Kyle began to wonder.

  The way Alice talked about Timothy, especially when she’d had a few drinks, made Kyle think she’d never really dealt with his death. She’d never really gotten to grieve. It wasn’t hard to understand why once Alice started in on the whiskey. After Timothy passed away, her parents completely shut Alice out of their lives. They ignored her. They didn’t give her money for college or help her move out or even go to her high school graduation.

  They did nothing, and she had been alone.

  Seeing a dead child wasn’t just heartbreaking for Alice: it tore open the scabs on her soul from when her brother died.

  And as they drove the little Honda down the gravel road in complete silence, Kyle wondered whether any of them would ever be okay again.

  ***

  The gas was low when they stopped for lunch outside of a little town none of them had ever heard of.

  “It’s not surprising in Kansas,” Alice said. “There are plenty of towns no one has ever heard of. Sometimes a place only has a couple hundred people. These areas are lucky they’re even on the map.”

  Kansas was so different from Colorado sometimes. Oh, there were ghost towns everywhere, but with tourists flocking to the Rockies for skiing and snowboarding and family get-togethers and weekends away, it was difficult to have towns no one had heard of.

  Mark spread a blanket on the grass next to the road. There was a little clearing that looked like it had been recently mown. He sat down and made himself comfortable. Then Mark opened a bag of pizza-flavored chips.

  Pizza.

  “As good as the real thing, buddy?” Kyle asked. He joined Mark and opened a box of sugary cereal he’d taken from the last house they’d stayed at. Life was pretty shitty these days. He felt like he deserved some marshmallows in his breakfast. Lunch. Food. Whatever. He didn’t have coffee coursing through his veins today. Sugar was the next best thing.

  “Fuck you for talking about pizza,” Mark bit into the chip. It crunched loudly. Every sound felt amplified in the awkward silence that filled the world these days. “I’d do anything for a hot slice of pepperoni.”

  Alice watched them for a second, then went and sat on the hood of the car. She had jeans on. If she hadn’t been wearing them, the heat from the engine would have burned the backs of her t
highs. Even through the pants, Kyle knew her position on the hood couldn’t be comfortable, but Alice didn’t seem to care about her own comfort right now. She didn’t seem to care about eating, either. Kyle offered her some of his cereal, but she ignored him and just kept sitting.

  Mark watched her quietly for a minute, then opened a bottle of whiskey.

  “Isn’t it a bit early?” Kyle asked.

  “Again, fuck you,” Mark took a swig before passing the bottle to Kyle. He raised his eyebrow and waited for Kyle to drink. Kyle wasn’t one for day drinking, but he also wasn’t the best at coping with his personal stress levels. Those levels were through the roof and well off into space at this point. He deserved a fucking drink.

  He needed one.

  He didn’t want to admit he needed liquor to cope, but right now, he’d drink just about anything if it meant he could forget for a little while. Hell, he didn’t even need to forget. If he could just not care for a little while, that would be great. That would be perfect.

  Kyle sipped from the whiskey bottle. The liquor went slowly through his body, quietly filling his belly and warming his veins. It felt good to be drinking. It felt good to be doing something normal for once. It felt good.

  The past few days had been a blur of running and fighting and sweating. He felt dirty and gross and tired. Kyle felt like he was on a bad vacation that just wouldn’t end. He wanted to go home and take a shower, put on some sweatpants, and play some Call of Duty. He wanted to relax in front of his television with his controller and his headset and just lose himself in the game.

  Being in the apocalypse was like being on a road trip with a full bladder, a crying baby, and gridlock traffic on a bridge.

  You wanted to jump off, but you couldn’t quite bring yourself to do it.

  “There are more today,” Kyle said, looking at the road, watching the ones who were getting closer. A few Infected were wandering out from the edge of the town. The day before, there hadn’t been many. Even that morning, there were very few during the drive. When Kyle didn’t think too hard, he could almost imagine he and his buddies were just cruising around.

  But he did think too hard.

  And he couldn’t quite imagine that.

  Maybe the Infected really were just learning to wander out of the cities or maybe there were just more creatures that hadn’t been completely torn to shreds by the others. He wasn’t sure. There weren’t enough to worry about. Not just yet.

  “Oh, shit,” Mark said suddenly, and Kyle looked over. Mark wasn’t talking to him, though. He was looking at Alice. She had a crowbar in hand and was wailing on an Infected that had wandered up to her. It had come from the opposite direction of town, or maybe from the fields. He hadn’t noticed it.

  Blood spattered as she hit the creature, swinging hard and hitting even harder. She’d never played sports, not that Kyle knew about, but she had a good swing and she set a solid pace.

  She stood with her legs shoulder-width apart. She swung the crowbar like it was a bat. Over and over again, she hit the body. Over and over again, she wailed on the creature until it finally collapsed.

  Only then, only when it was on the ground, only when it was barely twitching, only then did Alice hit it in the head and put it down for good.

  Kyle and Mark watched in silence. Neither one of them moved from their makeshift picnic blanket. What the fuck had just happened? Alice had gone completely crazy on that Infected. She could have easily taken it out with whack to the head, but she hadn’t.

  She had toyed with it.

  She had hurt it.

  She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, then she turned to look at Mark and Kyle. She didn’t speak, didn’t even show any signs of emotion. She just looked at them.

  Then she climbed back on the hood of the car with the crowbar and she continued sitting.

  “She’s fucking lost her shit,” Mark said.

  She had lost it completely.

  Chapter 3

  Mark watched Alice sit on the car. She’d just killed a zombie, but it was more than that: she’d murdered it. She hadn’t simply put it out of its misery. She hadn’t simply defended herself. She had been angry. She’d been pissed and she had taken out her aggression on the Infected.

  He’d seen it all before.

  “Don’t freak out,” he said quietly to Kyle, adjusting his position on the blanket. He didn’t take his eyes off Alice, though. She pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on top of them. The crowbar was still in her hand, resting against the car. If it had been his car – actually his, not just some car he’d stolen – he’d complain she was going to mess up the paint.

  It wasn’t his car, though.

  And he didn’t really care.

  “I’m not the one you need to worry about.” Kyle stared at Alice, and Mark wondered how much more she’d be able to take. He could already see her perfectly manicured demeanor starting to fracture. The walls she’d built up around herself were slowly starting to crack and if they weren’t careful, Alice was going to shatter.

  If that happened, Mark wasn’t sure he could put her back together.

  Would Alice actually be able to keep on living like this? Would she be able to cope without some semblance of normalcy? Would she be able to keep running toward something better that might not ever come?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t know her as well as he should have. He couldn’t predict how she might respond the way he felt like he should. He thought he should be able to predict her movements, that he should be able to know exactly what her breaking point was, and he couldn’t.

  This drove him mad.

  That was the problem with trying to be a civilian when you had a soldier’s mind, though. Nothing was ever enough. Nothing was ever satisfactory. Kyle didn’t seem to mind that he couldn’t tell what Alice would do next, but Mark was constantly calculating their odds of survival and a wild card was never a good thing. Not when you were playing to win. Not when your life was on the line.

  He shook his head, trying to clear his scattered thoughts. He needed to stop worrying about Alice so much. She wasn’t his puppy. She wasn’t some stray he’d taken in to save. Sometimes he thought that she and Kyle both were, but they weren’t. They weren’t pets. They weren’t projects. They were people with real problems and real issues and real complications that didn’t stop spinning just because the world did.

  “What about you, man?” Mark lifted the bottle of whiskey. “How are you holding up?”

  “I don’t even know how to begin answering that.”

  “Start with today.”

  “Today is the worst, Mark.”

  “Yep. Yep, I agree.”

  “I keep thinking of my family,” Kyle admitted. He looked a little nervous. His fingers played with the blanket they were sitting on. Kyle wasn’t exactly an open book when it came to his family issues. Neither was Mark, so he didn’t mind. “I shouldn’t. I do, though. I wonder if they’re okay. I wonder if they got this thing there. I wonder a lot of things.”

  Kyle didn’t have the best relationship with his family. It was tumultuous at best and painful at worst. From what Mark knew, they’d been supportive when he was a kid, but then they’d just stopped. He wasn’t sure if there was a moment when things had shifted for Kyle or if his parents had simply fallen into the trap of thinking that when their kids got older, their job as guardians was finished. Over. Completed.

  Mark shifted from feeling bad for his friend to feeling jealous. At least Kyle had a family. At least Kyle had a place he belonged, sort of. That was something Mark had never had, not really. He’d been a foster kid, growing up in the system and never getting adopted. When he’d turned 18, he’d left. The Army had given him the family he’d never had.

  But Kyle was obviously in pain.

  He was obviously hurting.

  It wasn’t Mark’s job to fix his friend, wasn’t his job to come up with a solution for this problem. He could listen to his buddy, though. He
could be an ear for Kyle. They were in this together, whether they liked it or not.

  Mark wondered what had happened to the people he knew, too. Were his foster brothers and sisters alive? What about his friends from his military days? It wasn’t the same as missing your family. It was more like a strange curiosity. Was the rest of the world scared? Were they confused? Or was everyone just dead?

  There was no way to know.

  There was no marking yourself as safe during the zombie invasion.

  There was no mass texting.

  There was no sending a quick selfie to show you were fine.

  There was just nothing.

  Mark took a deep breath and counted silently to himself. Ten. He needed to count to ten before he freaked out, too. He had to stay calm. He owed it to his friends to stay in control of himself, in charge.

  That was the one thing they needed to be able to count on. They needed to be able to trust Mark to keep them safe. They needed to be able to depend on him. He wouldn’t freak out. He couldn’t afford to.

  “You think we should head for Colorado?” He asked Kyle quietly. He didn’t think the kid would want to. They were going in the opposite direction, as far as Mark could tell. By his calculations, they’d hit the Missouri border pretty soon if they didn’t end up turning south, but this was Kyle’s family they were talking about. Maybe he was feeling guilty about trying to survive instead of trying to save them.

  “Not particularly,” Kyle said. He sighed and grabbed the liquor bottle again. He sipped it and closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again. He was struggling, but he was hanging on. He was doing his best to focus, to keep calm.

  “The weather is shit,” Kyle muttered. “It’s unpredictable. Even if we made it through a freak hailstorm, we might freeze to death on the side of the road before we could get to safety.”