by Kate L. Mary
Fighting for a Future
A Zombie Apocalypse Love Story Novella
Kate L. Mary
Published by Twisted Press, LLC, an independently owned company.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to person, living or dead, actual events, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Kate L. Mary
Cover art by Kate L. Mary
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For permissions contact: [email protected]
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
Also by Kate L. Mary
About the Author
Chapter 1
Thinking back, the memory of my first encounter with a zombie seems so surreal that I sometimes wonder if it really happened at all. Late at night after the other survivors have started to settle down and the room is filled with the sleeping sounds of snores and heavy breathing, I can almost convince myself it was all a bad dream. A virus never swept across the country. My parents didn’t die a slow horrible death and neither did my friends. I’m not trapped in my old high school, surrounded by people I just met and have no desire to get to know better. The future is not hopeless.
Then I drift off to sleep and the horror of the situation comes slamming into me. Even when my subconscious is able to acknowledge that I’m dreaming, I can’t wake up. I’m trapped. Trapped in a world of grisly memories so sharp they overshadow everything else. Screams echo through my brain, and the groans of the dead as they feast on human flesh are more sickening than anything I’ve ever dared imagine. And I was a horror writer in my previous life. Go figure.
The dreams are why I now find myself walking the halls. I usually can’t get more than a couple hours of sleep at a time, and checking to make sure all the doors are still secure seems more productive than staring into the darkness while I listen to the heavy breathing of the other survivors. I swear they’re taunting me with their snores. Rubbing it in that they are able to get rest while my body seems to find it impossible to shut down. So I spend the night roaming the halls, trying to ignore the dead as they shamble across the schoolyard, but finding it impossible not to stop and stare from time to time. There are so many of them, but at least at night I can pretend they’re not reanimated corpses who are determined to eat my face off. Of course, that illusion will vanish the second the sun bursts over the horizon, bringing with it a new dawn and a brand new set of horrors.
Footsteps echo through the hall behind me, and even though it causes the hair on my scalp to prickle, I don’t look away from the shambling bodies outside. How many of these monsters are people I once knew? It’s hard to make their features out in the moonlight—not that anyone sane could possibly want to see these horror-stricken faces—but sometimes if I stare hard enough, I can convince myself I recognize someone. Only, I’m not sure if that’s better or worse. I hate thinking this is what happened to my friends.
“I hope they’re not trapped inside those rotting corpses,” I whisper.
“What did you say?” comes a deep voice from right behind me.
My back stiffens involuntarily and my fingers tighten on the baseball bat clutched in my hand. I knew it was Riley before he spoke, but it still gets under my skin. He refuses to give up on his efforts to be my buddy. The last thing I want is someone else I have to worry about losing.
“Nothing,” I say, keeping my eyes straight ahead.
Riley stops at my side and the masculine scent of Axe body spray tickles my nostrils. I glance his way out of the corner of my eye and frown. His shaggy brown hair is wet, the ends still so damp that a few drops of water fall onto his black t-shirt. The tight shirt stretches across his muscles, bunching up at his biceps and revealing tattoos I’ve worked hard to avoid studying. I don’t want to know who this man at my side is or was, because he’ll never be anything more than what he is now. If I got to know him—or anyone else here for that matter—it would just hurt too much when he died.
Because we will all die. There is no other possible ending to this story.
“You took a shower in the dark?” I say, even though I don’t feel like starting a conversation.
Riley nods as he turns to face me, and without thinking about it my body shifts his way. “Wanted to take advantage of the water while it’s still working.”
He’s right. We’ve been in the school for five days now. Without electricity for three days. The gas cut off two days ago, which means the water is like ice, but it won’t be around much longer. We’d be stupid to think otherwise.
“I’ll go down with you if you want,” he says casually, as if he’s offering to do something more than screw me. “Stand guard. Hold the flashlight so you can see.”
The moonlight glows through the window and reflects off his brown eyes as they hold mine, and it almost takes my breath away. If we were somewhere else, I’d want him. There isn’t a thing about this man that isn’t beautiful. His brown hair is cut close, but stylish, and his eyes are the color of dark chocolate. He has a strong jaw and cheekbones that are defined, yet masculine at the same time. Then there’s his body, which I noticed the first day. I may have been shaking from shock and covered in blood, but there was no way I could miss it when this sexy man pulled his own blood-soaked shirt off. Every inch of him perfection; from his thick biceps to his chiseled chest and abs.
But we aren’t somewhere else. We’re here. Stuck in an abandoned high school while the world goes to shit all around us. Biding our time until we join the dead that have now claimed the earth as their own. I’m not trying to be a pessimist, just a realist, and I can’t realistically see how we would ever be able to get out this situation alive.
“I don’t need your help,” I say, turning back to face the window.
The sun is just coming up, filling the hallway with a soft orange glow. The start of another glorious day. Right. I wish I could be numb or at the very least in denial, but I can’t. Every sound that echoes through the hall makes my heart beat faster. Hurt just a little more. Even the sound of Riley breathing as he stands silently at my side causes an ache to spread through me.
A moan pierces the silence and is followed shortly by a zombie stumbling into view. She’s only five feet away with nothing more than a couple inches of wood and glass separating us. Her back is to us, but after a second she turns. Almost as if she knows I’m here.
I recognize her right away.
Ms. Wilson. She’s worked in the school library since the eighties, one of those perpetual old maids who always dressed fifteen years behind the current styles; she treated the books like they were her children. Even as time went on and the dusty pages in that room became more and more inconsequential, she acted like they were more holy than the Grail. And I’m pretty sure she hated kids, which made it ridiculous that she worked at the school at all.
Of course, now she looks worse than ever. Her clothes are filthy and torn and her skin is an unnatural shade of gray. The right lens in her glasses is missing and the one still remaining is cracked. A handful of hair has been torn out at the roots and what’s left is matted in dried blood, and th
e huge bite mark on her neck tells me exactly how she died.
A wave of sorrow sweeps over me as she claws at the window, her mouth chopping in response to the primal need inside that tells her to feed. I raise my hand and rest it against the window, the glass cold against my palm, but that only seems to drive her wilder. She snarls, slamming her body against the door, and the whole thing shakes. Tears fill my eyes and I force myself to turn away.
Riley trails after me, of course.
He’s been following me around since the second day, only I don’t know if he’s just trying to get into my pants or if he’s clinging to the only other person in this place that’s even close to his age. There are seventeen survivors here. Three children, two teens, and a handful of people age forty and up. Then Riley and me.
He has to be close to twenty-five, and I just celebrated my twenty-first birthday two weeks ago. A bar hop across town with some girl friends that had started with short, tight dresses and lots of laughter, and had ended early the next morning with me sneaking out of some guy’s apartment. I don’t remember him or how I got to his place, or what transpired after the bars closed down. At the time it had seemed like the epic twenty-first birthday, but now it just feels like a waste. Squandering one of my last nights of normalcy getting so drunk I can’t even remember whether or not I had a good time. What a moron.
“Kyra!” Riley calls, jogging up beside me. “You shouldn’t go wandering around alone.”
“Wrong. I’ve been alone for hours. Plus, you just took a shower alone.”
“Trust me, I would have preferred company.”
I stop walking and turn to face him, but he just grins. An adorable smile that shows off the dimple in his right cheek. Damn. Why does he have to be so hot?
“I’m kidding.” He winks, and even though I try to hold onto my melancholy, I can’t stop myself from smiling. Riley’s grin grows. “You can smile.”
My own smile melts away faster than an ice cube on a hot July day. “Seriously? Exactly what about this situation should make me smile, Riley?” A million other things almost come out of my mouth, but I know it’s pointless and I’m not going to waste any more time on stupidity.
I start to walk away, but Riley grabs my arm and forces me to stop. “Hey. I’m sorry, okay.” When I refuse turn to face him, he steps in front of me. “Kyra?”
My bottom lip quivers and I start to hate myself. The anger that slammed into me a second ago has vanished, and in its place is only pain. Pain for the things we’ve lost and the things we’ve seen, and for what I know will end up being a horrible end.
“I knew her,” I say, jerking my head back toward the door like that can explain everything. It can’t. I’m crying over a librarian I never really liked to begin with, and that makes this whole thing so much worse. I wipe my hand across my face to get rid of the tears, afraid that if I don’t stop them now I’ll never be able to.
“Who was she?” Riley’s voice is soft. Gentle.
Something about it breaks through my walls and I can actually feel myself coming back to reality. The past few days have felt unreal. Like a horrible dream I couldn’t wake up from. But now, standing in front of Riley and actually talking about what happened is like a slap in the face, only I’m not sure if it’s good or bad.
“No one,” I say, tearing my gaze from his. “It doesn’t even matter. I didn’t like her.”
“Maybe that’s worse?”
“What?” I can’t stop myself from looking up, meeting his gaze again.
“If you had liked her you probably wouldn’t feel so shitty, because you’d at least be able to remember something good.”
He has a point. If it was Mr. Thompson or Mrs. Diggs out there, or one of the dozens of other teachers I’d had over the years that I actually liked, I’d at least be able to manage a sad smile. With Mr. Thompson I could remember how he constantly joked about his receding hairline, or how Mrs. Diggs had a mad crush on Taye Diggs and claimed that she’d changed her name so she could pretend they were married. With Ms. Wilson, though, all I can do is think about how I never thought she could look worse than she had back in that library, lipstick constantly on her teeth as her cold eyes stared at me through the lenses of her too-big glasses.
“Hey.” Riley nudges me when I don’t say anything. “You okay?”
“No, but I’m not sure any of us are.”
He nods slowly, his eyes on the floor.
I let out a deep breath. The conversation with Riley has made my head feel clearer than it has this entire week. Before it felt like I was watching everything through a haze as it happened to someone else, but now I feel…present. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, though. I feel more like me, which will be good when it comes to surviving, but in the face of everything I’ve lost, I almost wish I could have stayed oblivious. Now I’m going to be forced to face the things I’ve lost. To deal with the feelings I’ve been hiding from.
“Maybe a shower is a good idea,” I say, turning away from Riley.
His footsteps echo down the hall at my back, following me the whole way to the women’s locker room. I shoot him a look when I push the door open, but he just shrugs.
“You really shouldn’t be alone. There’s safety in numbers.” The twinkle in his eye has no place in an apocalyptic world.
“Sure,” I mutter under my breath.
The locker room is pitch black, but I’m able to make out the shape of the sinks and showers in the distance. A light flicks on behind me and Riley pans the flashlight around, illuminating the room. For some reason, it feels even creepier than it did when it was totally dark.
“I’ll keep watch,” Riley says from behind me, still panning the flashlight around like he’s certain that a horde of the undead is hiding in every corner.
“Yeah, on my ass,” I mutter as I lean my bat against a bench.
I step into the first stall and pull the curtain shut behind me. Before I strip, I flip the water on as if I’m giving it time to warm up. A pointless gesture since the gas is no longer working, but a habit anyway. Little beads of chilly water bounce off the tile floor and hit my bare skin, making me shiver. I suck in a deep breath to prepare myself, knowing the water is going to be colder than a lake in mid-December, then step in.
When the icy stream slams into me, I let out a little squeal. In seconds my body is covered in goose bumps so pronounced a blind person would probably mistake me for a brail copy of War and Peace. The shampoo and soap I’ve been using is right where I left it, so I get busy washing myself. Scrubbing my skin—still tan from the long summer days I spent stretched out on the beach—then washing my blond hair. It goes down to the middle of my back, and as I scrub it I realize that it won’t be too long before it starts to get in my way. When we lose the water for good, I may need to cut my hair. For some reason, the thought makes me sadder than the idea of losing the water does.
I’m done in record time, but the second I turn the shower off I realize I made an epic mistake. No towel. Shit. I’m shivering from head to toe, shaking so hard that my teeth chatter together like a cartoon character. Putting my clothes on without drying off would be dumb, but my only other option is to ask Riley for help.
Just thinking about it sends warmth shooting through me. Unfortunately, it only warms one part of my body.
“You okay in there?” Riley’s voice echoes through the empty locker room, making me jump. I hate how everything echoes now. It’s yet another reminder that the world has disappeared.
I wrap my arms around my chest and steady myself, counting to ten while I try to decide what to do. Realistically, I know I don’t have a choice. If I get my clothes wet I’ll be miserable while I wait for them to dry.
Dammit.
“I f-forgot to g-get a t-towel,” I call, squeezing my eyes shut and hugging myself closer.
“I’ll get you one.” Riley’s voice is almost lost in the shuffle of footsteps as he makes his way across the tile floor.
I hold myself tig
hter and lean against the wall, my entire body wracked by tremors from the cold that seems to have invaded my veins. The hair on my legs has grown out, and it’s coarse enough that it feels like pinpricks against my own skin. There are so many things I’ll miss about my old way of life, and even though it seems shallow and stupid in the middle of everything else going on, shaving my legs is one of them.
The curtain is pulled aside and the soft glow of the flashlight fills the dark stall. Riley’s arm shoots in, almost smacking me in the face. The towel dangles from his outstretched hand. “Here it is.”
“Thanks.” I jerk it out of his grasp and hold it against me, thinking he’s going to sneak a peak. The curtain is pulled shut a second later.
I’m in the middle of drying myself off, still shivering, when Riley says, “You don’t need any help, do you?”
This guy really doesn’t give up.
“No.” My hair is dripping, so I wrap it in a towel, hoping to keep my dress dry when I pull it over my head. It’s early fall in South Carolina, so it’s stuffy and humid, but sitting around in damp clothes all day still doesn’t sound like fun.
Once I’m dressed I step out of the shower stall. Across the room Riley is leaning against the counter with his hands shoved in his pockets.
When he sees me, he gives me a mock frown. “I thought you asking for the towel was an invitation.” With the beam of the flashlight shining across the room, his entire face is covered in shadows, making it impossible to read his expression, but the laughter in his voice is hard to miss.
“It wasn’t.” I rip the towel off my head and work at drying my hair. “If I were to extend an invitation like that—which I won’t—you’d know it.”