He didn’t have time for horror stories that would elicit feelings of fear. He felt more than enough fear to last him a lifetime. Now, he was living his own nightmare. If the Infected didn’t get them, they’d probably starve to death. Fucking Kyle would probably die of an asthma attack before the month was up. Alice would get in one of her moods and go bonkers on the wrong Z. She’d try to take one out and it would bite her.
And as much as Mark didn’t want to admit it, as much as he didn’t want to think about it, he wasn’t sure if he could live without them. In just a few days, he’d become addicted to Alice and Kyle, and he needed them.
He needed them.
***
When Mark woke, he was alone. He sat up on the couch and took a second to collect his bearings. There would be no coffee today, no hot breakfast. There would be no caffeine to give him a jumpstart. There would just be him and Alice and Kyle against the world. There would just be the three of them fighting the undead.
There would just be them trying to survive another day without dying or going crazy.
He went to the window. There were still Infected wandering around. Maybe they should go out and kill the fuckers. He and Alice could probably clear them all in an hour or so. If the noise they made didn’t bring new ones over, anyway. He wasn’t sure how many there would be left roaming around the town. Maybe there were enough that they really would come out of the woodwork if Mark made some noise. Then again, maybe not. Maybe they’d clear these fuckers out and have the town to themselves.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Even without the caffeine, Mark knew he was dreaming. He had a feeling this was one mess that was going to last a long time and whether or not they killed the Z’s outside was irrelevant. There would be more. There would always be more. They could kill them all, clean out the town, and more would come. It didn’t matter.
He watched them for awhile from up in the window. He was on the second floor of the library, which gave him a surprisingly good view. He could see his car parked just up the road and he had a clear view of the building across the road. There were zombies walking around between the two buildings and he thought a few might have come out of the government building across the street. If it wasn’t a courthouse, it was the mayor’s office. It had to be one of the two. The stone architecture was too nice to be anything else, and Mark thought that if the library didn’t work out, maybe they could try the building across the road. That one had better walls, but more windows, so it might not be worth the trade-off.
The windows across the road were empty, staring at him blankly. Were there any survivors in there? Were there people holed inside?
Years ago, Mark would have said they should go see. He would have said it was their duty to make sure the others were okay, that they had everything they needed.
Now things were different.
Now it was every man or woman for themselves.
Now they were on their own.
Mark didn’t like the way this new world made him feel. He prided himself on being honorable. He had a strong moral character, at least that’s what he’d always told himself. Things were different when you were in the middle of a war, though. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of. He’d seen things he wished he hadn’t.
When he came home, he thought he’d be able to reclaim his life. He thought things would get better for him, but they didn’t. They only got worse and now he found himself in the middle of a different war.
Only this war was one he didn’t think they could win.
This war was one where strategy didn’t matter.
In this war, it was kill or be killed or hide long enough to outlast the enemy.
Mark didn’t have any big guns and he didn’t have an army and he didn’t have a plan.
This wasn’t a war he was going to do well in.
Finally, he realized he hadn’t seen Alice or Kyle and he wondered what they were doing. He fixed the couch and put all of the cushions back in place, then he left the room and went downstairs. He didn’t hear his friends. Maybe they were whispering or maybe they’d just gotten better at being quiet. Somehow, he doubted it. He liked them both just fine, but sneaky was something his buddies were not.
Mark had grabbed his baseball bat. His gun was preferable, but not indoors. One of these days, they’d get more handguns, but he didn’t like using the rifle inside. Not unless he really, absolutely had to.
He held the bat close to himself and pushed open the door to the main area of the library. Mark hoped his friends had stayed indoors. He didn’t think they would have wandered outside to explore without letting him know, but you never knew. People reacted strangely to stress. They were unpredictable when under pressure and this was a pretty pressure-filled situation.
After Kyle’s fuck-up yesterday with leaving to pee alone, Mark didn’t trust them to stay close by. He silently chided himself for oversleeping, but he knew he must have been exhausted if he hadn’t even heard them leave the room.
That knowledge made him nervous.
If he hadn’t woken when Loud and Louder left, would he have woken if a zombie came in the room?
He didn’t want to think about it.
Then again, he didn’t want to think about anything. Maybe Mark should make a list of things he no longer thought about. At the top of the list would be his ex-wife, followed by all the poor decisions he’d made in his life, all the bad calls, and all the men he’d lost. After that, he could add “zombies” and “starvation” and “oversleeping.”
It would be a really good list, he thought dryly.
“You guys down here?” Mark called out when he entered the main room of the library. He didn’t bother checking the basement. They wouldn’t be down there. Not without flashlights.
He held his breath, hoping they were just sitting around reading, but he didn’t see them yet. He held his bat tightly.
“Over here,” Alice’s voice rang out almost instantly, and he followed the sound of her voice. Mark navigated past bookshelf after bookshelf and finally found Alice curled up in a soft chair with a pile of books around her. She looked up when he got here and the smile she gave him lit up the world.
It lit up his world.
Then again, Alice was his whole world.
“Having fun?” He asked.
“Check this out.” She pointed to the stack of books. “Tara Crescent! Kitty Thomas! I even found some Lexi Blake in here!”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” he said, suddenly feeling stupid. He’d always been the muscle and never the brains.
“Hey, chin up,” she gently tapped his chin, and he met her eyes. “They’re just authors I like. They write quirky, naughty stuff.”
She held up a book with a couple embracing on the cover.
“So it would seem,” he said. Now Mark had to smile. “Where’s Kyle?”
“Right here,” Kyle said, appearing at the end of the shelves. “What’s up, buddy? How’d you sleep?”
“As well as can be expected.”
“Want some food?”
“No,” Mark shouldn’t be turning down fuel, but he couldn’t stomach anything this early. Not just yet. Not unless it was bacon and eggs with a side of hash browns and black coffee.
Alice set down her book and stood up. She was wearing the same outfit from the day before, but her hair looked soft. Mark wondered if she’d brushed it or styled it somehow. That seemed like something Alice would do. They were in the middle of Deathville, USA, and she managed to look nice.
“What should we do today?”
“Kill zombies?” Kyle asked, almost hopefully.
After a minute of consideration, Mark swung his bat and smiled.
“Let’s go kill zombies.”
Chapter 10
As a little boy, Kyle loved to play outdoors. Living in the mountains meant he could wander around on his own exploring trees and caves and creeks. As long as he was careful and always came home in time for dinner, his p
arents let him have free reign.
One day, he and his brother were walking around and found a new tree. It was one they hadn’t seen before.
“We should climb it,” Keith said, but Kyle didn’t want to.
“It’s not sturdy enough. Look at the branches.” He pointed at some of the upper branches. They looked like they’d been damaged in one of the recent storms. They’d been weakened and they wouldn’t hold the weight of two growing boys. Keith and Kyle were both scrawny kids, but there was no way that tree was going to support them.
“Don’t be a scaredy cat,” Keith taunted, and went for the branches. He pulled himself up, easily swinging his leg to the first branch. Kyle watched helplessly as his brother leapt higher and higher, climbing and climbing, until he was soon halfway up.
“That’s high enough,” Kyle said. “You made your point. Come down.” They were both just kids, but Kyle didn’t want his brother to get hurt. He didn’t want him to fall. He hated the idea that something might happen to Keith. It scared him.
Keith was his favorite person in the whole world. Without him, he was lost. Kyle didn’t know what he’d do without his brother by his side. He pushed those thoughts aside, though, because nothing was going to happen to Keith today.
“Come on,” Kyle called to his brother.
“Look! No hands,” Keith let go of the branches and quickly grabbed on again. He repeated the movement, obviously trying to impress Kyle.
Kyle wasn’t impressed.
“That’s enough,” he said.
Keith didn’t listen, though. Once more, he let go of the branches. Once more, he grabbed back on. It was a gambling game, though, and the problem with gambling is that at some point, you have to lose.
Keith’s hand slipped the last time. His hand slipped and he began to fall.
“Kyle!” Keith cried out for help, but it was too late. There was nothing Kyle could do. He ran forward, ran to try to catch his little brother, but Keith was hitting branches on the way down and still had a long way to go.
The entire thing seemed to happen in slow motion, and Kyle thought he might throw up. He tried to catch Keith, tried to stop his brother from hitting the ground, but it didn’t matter.
Keith hit the ground and began to scream. The sound of bones breaking filled the air. It was a sound Kyle would never forget as long as he lived. It was a sound that would haunt him forever.
His brother would live, but Kyle would never forget the way he let him down.
Kyle would never forget the way he failed Keith.
***
Kyle left his gun inside. They were going to fight for fun, not for serious, and he wanted to save the bullets. He should bring it with him, he thought, but he was also beginning to think that zombies were more like spiders than monsters.
They were annoying, but they weren’t exactly scary.
Oh, he knew they were dangerous, knew he needed to be careful. He knew they could grab him and bite him and his life would be over. Mark would put him down the second he was bit; there would be no afterlife for Kyle.
The three of them walked outside and stood on the porch. They dropped their pile of weapons at the top of the stairs. There was an Infected wandering around at the bottom of the stairs. It stopped when it saw them.
“Mine,” Alice said, and practically leaped down the stairs with her crowbar. Kyle was happy to sit back and watch her.
“She’s getting better,” Mark said as Alice sunk her crowbar into its head with new efficiency. He was right. It had only been a couple of days and already Alice’s aim was better.
“She’s not scared anymore,” Kyle said. The first few days, she’d been terrified. They all had, so he couldn’t blame her. It was nice to see her with this new confidence.
“Don’t forget to move the body,” Mark called to her. “I don’t want a pile of corpses outside our new home.”
“Move it your damn self then,” Alice said with a smirk. “I’m busy.”
The other Infected were making their way over, and Alice headed to the nearest one. They were slow moving and there wasn’t much of a chance any of them would get the jump on her. Still, Kyle watched warily as she took down one and then another. He wondered if her arms were getting sore from all the swinging, but Alice didn’t seem to mind.
She seemed to have it all under control. Kyle watched her move with efficiency and swiftness. She calculated the distance each one was from her, then decided the order in which she should attack. They weren’t coming terribly fast or quickly, but they were steadily moving toward her. They were steadily heading toward what they thought would be dinner.
Just a few days ago, these things had been people. Now, they were all but unrecognizable. Damn, but Kyle hoped his parents hadn’t turned. He hoped they weren’t monsters, too. He hoped they had hidden away and managed to outsmart this thing.
He hoped Keith was okay.
“I need something to take my mind off of my life,” Kyle said aloud. He stared at the pile of assorted weapons and random items they’d collected that could be used for fighting. Obviously, Mark was going to use the baseball bat. He was good with it, seemed to like using it. Mark’s arms were big and swinging didn’t seem to be difficult or exhausting for him. Kyle tried not to compare himself to Mark.
He hadn’t been in the military.
He hadn’t spent years working out.
He hadn’t done a lot of things.
Still, his scrawny arms bothered him. He tried not to think about it as he chose a hammer from the pile.
“Nice choice,” Mark said.
“Guess we’ll see what it can do,” Kyle agreed. He wasn’t sure it would be particularly effective. He would kill one Infected and if it was too hard or not very fun, he’d swap out. Alice was still going to town a few feet from the stairs, but Kyle spotted an Infected he wanted.
It was a man, or had been at one time. His hair was matted and stuck to his face. Had that been from the fever before the virus took over or had this happened later? Was it blood that made his hair stick to his skin like that? Kyle took a step forward. He lifted the hammer in his hand and felt its weight. He tried to calculate exactly when he should swing and how hard. If he missed, if he fucked this up, the Infected could grab him.
A hammer didn’t exactly provide a lot of distance between you and your target. It didn’t matter, though. He was done watching from the sidelines. He wanted to get in there and make this happen. He wanted to do something, anything. He wanted to feel something.
For too long, Kyle had tried to be a good person and make reasonable decisions. He’d been scared for a long time that he would somehow disappoint his parents. Even after he’d moved away and become his own person, or so he thought, he’d worried himself with parental expectations.
Now he saw how ridiculous the whole thing was.
It didn’t matter if his socks matched or if he got a promotion at work. It didn’t matter whether he had a stable income at a job he hated or an unpredictable income at a job he loved. It didn’t matter if he had a good health care plan, a good retirement plan, or a good five-year plan. None of it mattered.
It just didn’t.
The man with the bad hair saw Kyle looking at him and stumbled toward him. Out of the corner of his eye, Kyle noticed another Infected standing on the sidelines watching him. It wasn’t moving or making any effort to come toward him. It was simply staring. Strange. Kyle didn’t have time to worry about that, though. Instead, he lifted the hammer and waited for the man in jeans and a torn flannel shirt to come forward.
When the man approached, Kyle raised his hammer and swung. He missed horribly and hit the Infected in the shoulder. The creature growled and reached for Kyle, but despite his physical weakness, Kyle was sprightly. He jumped out of the way. The Infected touched his shoulder. Kyle shivered at the feeling of the creature’s hand against his shirt. He didn’t feel its skin, but he didn’t want to.
It grossed him out, made him feel dirty.
The creature came toward Kyle once more and this time, when he raised his hammer, he didn’t miss. He swung and sung the blunt end into the Infected’s head. It sank in like it was a ripe cantaloupe and not a person’s head. The squishing sound filled Kyle’s ears and the scent of blood and brain matter filled his nose instantly.
His stomach felt sick.
He let go of the hammer as the Infected fell to the ground. He stared at the beast in a crumpled pile on the road.
This is what life had become.
This is what he had to look forward to.
The world had died and Kyle was a murderer now. The worst part was that he didn’t even feel too bad about it. He felt sick, but he didn’t feel bad. He didn’t feel guilty. He should, he thought. He should feel really bad. He should feel regret, shame, and remorse. Those are things normal people felt when they killed someone else, but he didn’t.
“It’s okay,” Mark was suddenly next to him. He squatted down and pulled the hammer from the corpse. Then he gave it back to Kyle. Kyle took the hammer, dripping with blood, and held it away from himself. “It’s not a real person anymore. Remember that.”
Kyle nodded, but didn’t say anything. There wasn’t really anything to say. The truth was that he was a killer now. Pure and simple: he was a murderer. Mark and Alice could both say the things were dead. They could call them monsters or creatures or Infected. Kyle called them those things, too.
When it came down to it, though, when it came down to hitting one and watching it fall? He couldn’t deny it felt like he was killing a person. He couldn’t deny it felt like he was taking a life he didn’t have the power to take.
Was that his problem? He didn’t feel like he had any power? Or he didn’t feel like he deserved it? Kyle’s family often thought he was a failure. Hell, that had been part of the whole reason he’d left Colorado in the first place. He wasn’t powerless, though. He had power. He had all the power he wanted and the truth was, this was a new world now.
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 3) Page 6