He shuffles through the maps, not meeting my eye. “I’m a writer. That’s it. I can talk to people and record their stories.” His voice drops. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“But you can find out.” I point to his radio.
“What?”
I slam my palm against the tabletop in my excitement, which makes him jump. “Johnny, you’re collecting survival stories. Don’t you see how important that is? You have firsthand information on how other people are surviving the apocalypse.”
“Oh.” He blinks, scratching at his sideburns. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“I need you to keep talking to people. Keep interviewing. Start asking people for survival tips. Make a list. Write down every little tip and piece of advice you can glean, even if it doesn’t seem important.”
Johnny perks up. “A survival guide.” I can tell he’s deep in thought as his eyes un-focus. “A Post-Apocalypse Survival Guide. No, too generic. That sounds like something that could have been written before the shit hit the fan.”
It takes me a moment to realize he’s formulating another book title. “Zombie Survival Tips from the Living?” I suggest.
“Too clunky.” He chews his bottom lip. “How about ... How to Survive: Tips From Survivors of the Zombie Apocalypse ... no, that uses survive twice.”
“How to Persevere? How to Carry On? How to Tough It Out?” I chuckle at that last one. I could write a book on how to tough it out, though I’m sure no one would read it.
Johnny laughs too, a smile creasing his pensive face. “How to Survive and Thrive?”
“How to Thrive?”
“How to Thrive in the Apocalypse.” Johnny seizes a new notebook and scribbles out the title. “Yes! That’s it. I love the word thrive. It’s more than just surviving. Surviving can mean hiding out in the latrine and drinking your own piss to stay alive. I don’t want to write about that. I want to help people do more than just survive. I want to write about thriving.”
“We want to thrive,” I agree. After a beat, I add, “I have your first tip on how to thrive.”
“What is it?” Johnny leans forward, pen poised over the pale blue lines of his notebook.
“How to thrive, rule number one,” I say. “Even if the world has ended, don’t steal from drug dealers.”
This inspires a peal of laughter so loud the commotion around the Xbox lulls.
“What are you guys laughing about?” Reed asks.
“Kate and I are just making a list of ways to thrive in the apocalypse,” Johnny replies.
“Cool,” Eric says before his attention shifts back to God of War.
Johnny hunches over his notebook, writing as fast as he can. “Number two: avoid everyone in a uniform.”
“I disagree,” I say. “Not all soldiers murder college kids. I met a young soldier on the way here. He helped me bury my friend’s daughter. His name was Alvarez. Guy had a good heart.”
I take another long pull off the beer, remembering that nightmare of a day. I’d probably still be digging Aleisha’s grave if Alvarez hadn’t been there to help. Hand-dug graves always look like neat rectangles in the movies. In reality, you’re lucky to get a lopsided hole wide enough to hold a corpse in the fetal position.
Johnny stops scribbling and looks up at me. “Wait, what did you say the name of that guy was?”
“What guy?
“The guy who helped you bury your friend.”
“Alvarez.”
“Alvarez.” Johnny grabs the ham. “I’ve been talking to a guy named Foot Soldier. He’s living in an old Russian fort on the coast.”
“Fort Ross?” I ask.
“Yeah. You know it?”
“Yeah. I’ve been there. Carter had a field trip there when he was a kid. I was one of the chaperones.”
Johnny’s eyes light up. “Foot Soldier says it is a big ass fort with a twenty-foot wall all the way around it.”
“Sounds like Fort Ross. That wouldn’t be a bad place to weather the apocalypse. Too bad it’s so far away from here.”
“The point is, this guy’s real name isn’t Foot Soldier. That’s just his handle. His real name is Alvarez. What if it’s the same guy?”
“You mean, what if this Alvarez is the same Alvarez I met?”
“Yeah.” Johnny adjusts the dial on the ham, then leans forward to speak into it. “Foot Soldier, this is Wandering Writer. Are you there? Over.”
Seems unlikely, but I don’t have it in me to burst Johnny’s excitement. The young man I met in Laytonville was as green as they come. He was also on foot. The chance that he made it all the way to Fort Ross is slim to none.
The ham crackles in Johnny’s hand. “This is Foot Soldier. How’s it going in your neck of the woods? Over.”
Johnny oozes excitement. “Hey, Foot Soldier, I have a friend here. Her name is Kate. We think you guys might know each other. Did you by any chance help a woman bury someone on your way to Fort Ross? Over.”
“Holy shit,” comes the response. “Yeah, I did. Are those crazy runners with you?”
20
Map
KATE
My jaw falls open. I snatch the ham away from Johnny.
“Alvarez, is that really you?” Tears of emotion fill my eyes. “This is Kate.”
“Say ‘over,’” Johnny whispers.
“Over,” I say.
“Holy fucking shit,” comes the response. Even through the static, I hear the emotion in Alvarez’s voice. “Damn, woman. I’ve thought about you and Frederico every day since I left you. Meeting you guys saved my life. Every time things got hard, I told myself, Alvarez, if those two old fools can run two hundred miles on foot, so can you. I can’t believe you guys made it! Over.”
“Frederico didn’t make it.” My throat constricts. I blink to keep tears from spilling. “Over.”
“Shit. I’m sorry to hear that. He was a tough old bastard. I could tell that much. Over.”
I nod, then realize he can’t see me. “I know,” I croak. “He was a good friend. How did you get to Fort Ross? Over.”
“Long story. The short version is that I met up with some people along the way. A few of them were going to the fort and let me tag along. Are you safe? Over.”
“As safe as can be expected. Over.”
“I wish you could come here. We need good people to get this place up and running. Over.”
I sigh, my eyes traveling over the maps. Fort Ross is probably a solid two hundred miles from here. “Too far,” I say. “But I’m glad you’re safe and alive.”
“How’s your arm? Over.”
I glance down at the atrocity on my arm that is the stitches from Alvarez. “It’s healing.”
Johnny takes the ham from me. “Foot Soldier, this is Wandering Writer,” he says. “Are you the one who gave Kate those stitches?”
“Yeah, that was me.”
“Dude, those stitches make her look like the bride of Frankenstein. Did you sew those with a blindfold?”
Alvarez bursts out laughing. Johnny grins at me to show he’s joking. I roll my eyes, glancing down at the jagged black thread marring my arm. The stitches should be ready to come out soon. And Johnny isn’t far off from his Frankenstein comparison.
“I’m putting together a thrive list,” Johnny continues, speaking into the ham.
I tune him out as he rattles off the idea for his book. My eyes stray to all the maps Johnny has compiled.
Another cheer goes up from around the Xbox.
Alvarez has a group of survivors. He and Johnny are talking about farming, raising cattle, and fishing.
My survivors are playing video games.
They all need a drop kick into the present.
And I think I finally have a way to do it. I gather up Johnny’s maps.
The walls of the sitting room are covered with a mish-mash of posters and flyers, most of which pertain to music, bands, and ironic slogans. I pull out the thumbtacks, replacing the posters wit
h maps from around the world.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Carter, taking a break from God of War, glances at me from his seat on the floor.
“Johnny has been talking to people around the world,” I reply. “Apocalypse survivors. All the red dots indicate towns where he’s spoken to people.”
One second, all eyes are glued to God of War. The next second, a hush falls on the Xbox enthusiasts. Johnny, having switched off the ham, is also silent. Every head stares at the maps on the walls.
I move to the side, letting them take in the breadth of the global epidemic.
“Dude,” Eric breathes, breaking the silence.
“There are dots in other countries,” Carter says dumbly. He looks like someone delivered a wicked left hook to his brain. Emotion ripples across his face.
It makes a part of me break inside. Instead of the twenty-year-old young man before me, I see the little four-year-old who fell off his bike. More than anything, I wish I had a Band-Aid to cover his wound like I did when he was four.
“The outbreak isn’t isolated to the American northwest.” I raise my voice, pitching it loud enough to fill the room. They need to hear me. They need to see the maps. “It’s worldwide.”
Johnny rises, crossing to point to a city in England. “Robert the butcher. Single dad, widowed. Three kids. He was butchering a pig when riots started outside his shop. When a man with a missing throat ran in and attacked him, Robert fought him off. It wasn’t until his cleaver went into the man’s head did it dawn on him that he was dealing with a zombie. He closed the shop and rushed to get his kids from school.” Johnny’s voice drops. “He was able to get the two smallest. The older one, who was at a different school, never made it home. Robert hopes she’s still alive. He and his two youngest kids are back in the butcher shop. He boarded up all the windows. He and his kids are aging and drying the meats. They have enough to survive for a few months.”
Johnny moves to another red dot, this one a port town in Texas. “Pamela Winchester. A manager of Target who moonlights as an amateur marksman. She’s got a thing for guns. When people started eating each other inside the store, she went straight home to her guns. She’s teamed up with a group of other amateur marksmen. They’re holed up in an apartment complex on tight rations. Pamela isn’t sure what they’re going to do when they run out of food, but she’s ready to start shooting anything that doesn’t look alive.”
God of War is completely forgotten. All eyes are riveted on Johnny.
I study the group of young men and women before me. There’s Lila, who looks like she wants to hide in a closet and never come out. Reed and Eric grip the Xbox controllers like they’re lifelines. Even Johnny, with all the information he’s gathered, looks like he prefers denial to reality. My son looks like he’s been run over with a freight train. I wish Jenna was here to embrace the moment with me.
I push on, determined to make them see. “You can’t spend your days in front of the Xbox anymore. The food will run out. The water will run out. Something else could happen and we might need to leave. No one is going to come rescue us. We either take care of ourselves, or we die.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Eric asks.
This is my chance. Eric has given me an opening. I don’t intend to waste it.
“Tomorrow, we go to Trading Post.” That’s the outdoor shop in downtown Arcata. “We stock up on survival gear. We make sure we each have a bug-out bag in case things go to shit and we have to make a run for it. After that, we scavenge. Every day. We clear every room in this building and gather supplies. We get solar panels and hook up the washing machine. We fortify the downstairs lounge. We figure out how to plant a garden. We make Creekside our home. A real home. And we always, always have a contingency plan in place.”
There it is. My sixty-second soapbox speech. I scan their faces, trying to gauge the impact of my words.
Carter lets out a long, slow exhale. “I’m in, Mom.”
“Me, too,” Johnny says.
“I’ll help, but I’m not going outside,” Lila says.
“I’ve been working out how to set up the solar panel,” Eric says. “Count me in.”
“So long as I can get high at the end of the day, I’m in, too,” Reed says.
Eric smacks him. “Dude.”
“What?” Reed says.
Chuckles ripple through the room. For the first time since arriving here, I feel a sense of hope.
21
Surrounded
KATE
As I look at my tired face in the mirror, something occurs to me: I’m healthy. I’m almost recovered from my two-hundred-mile run. I have a few achy twinges here and there and the poison oak is still hanging out, but overall my body feels good. The swelling in my ankle is almost gone. I can lace on a shoe without discomfort. Even better, I’m not showing any signs of a waterborne illness. I’d been forced to drink unfiltered water on my way here, a risky move at best.
I may have hair badly in need of a cut and color, and I could benefit from an extra ten pounds, but in light of how bad things could be, I find it hard to care about my physical appearance.
I exit the bathroom and head into the living room. Everyone has gathered there, eager for the expedition to Trading Post. The exception is Lila. She still refuses to leave Creekside.
“This is going to be epic,” Reed is saying as I enter the room. “It’s my childhood fantasy to walk into a store and take whatever I want without paying for it.”
“Your childhood fantasy is stealing?” I ask.
He shrugs, unapologetic. “I grew up in the Oakland ‘hood. Stealing is practically in my DNA. Except that my dad would have whooped my ass if he ever caught me.”
That gets a few soft chuckles.
“You should come,” Jenna says to Lila. “What if more of those drug mules show up, or those College Creek guys?”
“You have a bigger chance of running into them out there than I do in here,” Lila replies.
“I’ll stay back,” Eric says casually, flipping through his collection of video games.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Lila says.
Eric rolls his eyes. “Who says this is about you? I want the Xbox to myself for a few hours.”
The others groan, but I see the way Eric looks at Lila. They might argue and bicker, but under the surface, I suspect Eric likes Lila. He has a lame way of showing it, usually goading her into an argument.
“No way,” Jenna says. “You guys have to pull your weight if you stay behind.”
“What do you want us to do?” Lila asks cautiously.
“Go through the cleared dorm rooms and find all the toilet paper, Kleenex, and paper towels,” Jenna says. “Find all the cleaning supplies and first aid supplies. Make an inventory and find a logical place to store it in room two-oh-four. That’s our supply room.”
Lila’s mouth is set in a thin, scared line, but Eric shrugs and says, “Okay, we can do that.”
“You gather the stuff,” Lila says. “I’ll organize it and write up the inventory.”
Should I be worried that Lila is so uncomfortable leaving the apartment? It’s a problem to be chewed on another time.
Twenty minutes later, Carter, Jenna, Reed, Johnny, and I are all astride bikes. Three of them came from the cleared dorm rooms; the other two were liberated from the rack outside the dorm. Reed was surprisingly savvy when it came to opening the U-Lock bike locks. A simple ballpoint pen was all it had taken to jimmy them open.
“It’s amazing what you can learn on YouTube,” he told me with a proud grin.
The five of us now pedal our way down Granite Avenue. I’d prefer to be on foot. It’s quieter and, to be honest, I’m more comfortable on foot than on a bike. But the others aren’t in the necessary shape to make a journey of several miles on foot, so I agreed to the bikes. At least they’d been smart enough to know we couldn’t use a car.
The silence of the road is broken only by the squawk of birds and the buzz of fl
ies congregated on the dead bodies. I scan the blank-faced buildings. My shoulder blades itch like I’m being watched, but there’s no telling if that’s my paranoia or my instinct talking.
The smell is worse than ever. We have handkerchiefs over our mouths and noses, but flimsy pieces of fabric aren’t enough to combat the stink of the rotting dead, which are fully encrusted with black flies and carrion birds.
We’re going to have to figure out a way to deal with the bodies sooner or later. Living around the smell and rot is not a good thing. I make a mental note to keep an eye out for a bulldozer or some kind of CAT while we’re in town.
“We should try to find some essential oil or perfume for the handkerchiefs,” Jenna says. “It would help combat the stink a little.”
“How about some patchouli?” Reed asks. “I know a few shops where we can find that.”
Everyone snickers. There’s an ongoing joke in Arcata about the hippies who use patchouli oil instead of deodorant. I had been nervous that Jenna was one of them when I first met her. And though she doesn’t shave her armpits—something I’ve come to overlook since getting to know her—she does use standard deodorant.
She and Carter pedal beside one another in easy silence. I’m not sure what transpired between the two of them last night, but things are different now. The stiff resentment is gone, and they’ve even smiled at each other a few times. That, coupled with the fact I finally have this group of kids looking forward instead of at the Xbox console has me in a good mood.
We slow as we reach the end of the street and make the turn onto the road that hugs the outer perimeter of the main campus. This part of the college isn’t in much better shape than our area. Bodies are everywhere, along with abandoned cars and military Jeeps. A wrought iron fence stands between the road and the large sports field on the front end of campus. Dozens of undead mill around on the field. A few turn at the sound of our passage, but most are too far away to hear us.
The world around me flips back and forth. Part of me sees the campus Carter called home the last two years: the white stucco buildings, the vast green lawn where students congregated to play soccer and football, the salty tang of the ocean air that’s always in my nostrils, and the redwood trees rising up alongside the buildings.
Undead Ultra Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 44