The First 30 Days: A Zombie Novel

by Lora Powell

  A bridge that looked less than trustworthy crossed a shallow stream. I held my breath until we crunched onto the gravel on the other side, and looked ahead as we rounded the final turn to our destination.

  A low, log building was directly ahead, several small cabins flanking it and fading into the gloomy trees. We had made it to the summer camp.

  SEVENTEEN-DAY 8

  The largest of the buildings lay directly ahead. A circular drive passed by right in front of the main entrance, a sign posted on the bulletin board hanging by the door proclaiming that the camping season was only two weeks away. With any luck, there hadn't been anyone living at the campground yet, and there wouldn't be any nasty surprises waiting for us within any of the buildings.

  Shawn stopped the car a small distance away from the entrance and the two of us sat there, neither willing to get out of the jeep until we were fairly certain that we were alone. A tense silence descended as we both looked around. I was looking over my shoulder, back the way that we had come, when a short blast from the horn caused me to jump in my seat.

  Heart beating wildly in my chest, I glared at him. "What was that!"

  He grinned sheepishly at me. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you. I just thought that it might be a good idea to make some noise and see what happens before we get out of the car."

  "Don't do that again." I grumped at him. Silently, I admitted to myself that it had been a good idea. If there were any zombies in the area, they would come running at the sound from the horn, and we could drive away. But I wasn't about to admit that to him.

  "Sorry."

  He didn't really look all that sorry.

  After another few minutes, we decided that it was probably safe to get out of the jeep. There really was only one way to test that theory. Shawn turned the ignition off and grabbed the bat from my lap. "Ready?"

  "No." But I reached for the door handle anyhow. We couldn't just sit in the vehicle forever.

  The trees surrounding the camp were old. They branched out in a thick canopy, blocking a significant amount of the light. It was only mid day, but it looked closer to night fall. I closed my car door as quietly as I could and stretched muscles tight from the uncomfortable ride. My heart rate, which had calmed down from my scare from the horn, ratcheted back up. I walked around the front of the jeep and waited for my companion to meet me.

  He had been looking carefully around the small clearing. When he joined me at the front of his jeep, we headed toward the main entrance of the largest building in an unspoken agreement. It seemed like as good a place as any to start.

  The main door was unlocked, both a blessing, and a possible curse. If the door was unlocked, did that mean that there was already someone here? Or that there had been someone working here at the time of the outbreak, and they now waited for us in some dark corner of the summer camp?

  The door pushed open with a creak, revealing a large, open room. Round tables crowded the space, each with a half a dozen folding chairs leaning against them. A closed door immediately to our left had a brightly painted wooden sign labeling it as the office. Far to our right, another closed door looked exactly like the one that we had used to get into the kitchen at my office cafeteria. It was silent and dark in the room, the light filtering in through the high windows enough to just see by. We were the only things moving.

  Moving toward the office door, Shawn listened at it intently before rapping the surface with his knuckles. The sound wasn't loud, but in the silence of the building, I was sure that anything that had been inside the office would easily have heard it. There was no response, and he carefully turned the knob and pushed the door open. Inside was exactly what I would have expected from the office for a kid's summer camp.

  A couple of chairs that had seen better days sat in front of a heavy old desk, the top littered with papers. A shelf along the back wall was lined with plenty of well used books that featured pictures of wildlife and plants on the covers. To the right, an open door was labeled 'nurse'. It was apparent immediately that there wasn't anyone in the office. I edged toward the darkened nurse's room, nightmare flashbacks of the zombie who sprung out of the walk in cooler at Jack plaguing my mind. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found nothing but a small desk, chairs, and a couch in the room.

  We continued our search of the building slowly, afraid at every corner that we would run into someone who wanted to eat us. But after a thorough search, the entire building turned out to be empty. I sagged into one of those folding chairs back near the entrance. The day had been an emotional roller coaster, and I was exhausted. And I was pretty sure that there was still hours left before the day officially ended.

  "This seems like a good place to stay for the night." We had kept mostly silent since getting out of the car, but Shawn must have felt that it was safe to speak now that we had cleared the building. "We can keep looking around tomorrow, but I think we've both had enough for today."

  I didn't argue with him. It had only been a day since we had stood in that kitchen and listened to a friend die. We had spent every second since just trying to keep ourselves alive, but the loss was beginning to catch up with me. I hadn't known Jack for all that long, but he had seemed like a good guy. He hadn't hesitated to welcome me into their small group and did his best to make me feel like one of them. No one deserved to die a death like he had, and I wiped the tear away that managed to sneak past my control, hopefully before Shawn noticed. I'd never been someone who cried. I didn't plan to start now.

  While searching the kitchen earlier, we had noted unopened boxes of muffins and breakfast pastries stacked on the counter. Confiscating one of the boxes of muffins, we retreated into the office. There wasn't a lock on the door, but I figured out how to wedge one of the chairs under the knob. The improvised lock wouldn't keep out a determined attacker for long, but it would slow them down. We each stuffed ourselves with as many of the muffins as we could keep down, they were the healthiest thing either of us had eaten in a week, and drank the last of the water that we had brought along in the bag. We would have to make finding drinking water a priority in the morning, but for now, all either of us wanted to do was get some rest.

  "I'll take the first watch. Get some sleep, I'll wake you up when it's your turn."

  Shawn had settled into the remaining chair, turning it toward the only way in or out of our refuge, and keeping one hand on the bat laying across his knees. He looked exhausted, clothes dirty, hair a mess, and the strain of the last week written all over his face. I hesitated, wondering if I should be the one to take the first watch, but ultimately gave in to my own need to shut down for a few hours.

  The faux leather couch in the nurse's office wasn't the most comfortable place I'd ever slept. The material was hard and cold, and it wasn't long enough for me to stretch out completely, but none of that mattered when I curled up on it. Using a blanket that I had found folded up in the closet in the corner for a pillow, I was asleep as soon as my head hit the material.

  EIGHTEEN-DAY 9

  I slept like the dead for long enough that when Shawn shook me to wake me up, the day had long since turned into night. Outside the high office window was the deep black of the middle of the night. The office was pitch black, causing my other senses to make up for my lack of sight. Quiet noises that I couldn't place came from outside of the building from time to time, keeping me on high alert as the endless hours crawled by. If it wasn't for the fact that there was another person sleeping on that couch just feet away, in the next room, I might have lost more than a little of my sanity waiting for the sun to come up.

  With great relief, I finally noted that the pitch black outside of that window was turning a deep blue. I concentrated on the gradual change in color, watching as it slowly morphed into dawn.

  The light was not as bright as I had expected, but the trees stretching their branches over everything in the area had blocked a lot of the afternoon sun the day before. So I shouldn't have been surprised. Either way, I was just glad to
see the sun.

  In the next room, Shawn had slept like the dead since he dropped into my vacated spot on the couch. He had barely moved. I wondered briefly if I should wake him as the sun rose, but decided against the idea. We had both been completely exhausted the day before. Even after sleeping for what must have been more than six hours, I still felt like I could have slept for another entire day. I knew that he must be feeling the same.

  I passed the time by poking around the small office. There wasn't much in there that I thought could be of much use for us. I did find a small flashlight in one of the desk drawers that I scooped up and added to our bag of supplies. After the night before, spent sitting in the dark, I was indescribably happy with my find. I was perched on the corner of the desk, slowly picking apart a muffin and eating it while listening to a bird singing loudly nearby, when I heard Shawn getting up in the next room.

  He emerged from the darkened room a minute later, still staggering slightly from sleep and rubbing his face vigorously. "Morning," he didn't spare me a glance as he greeted me with a voice still rough from sleep.

  "Morning," I watched as he wandered the office. He checked the chair that was still jammed under the door knob, stood on his toes to peer outside, and finally stopped his pacing long enough to take a few bites out of a muffin. "Nothing happened while you were sleeping." It was probably unnecessary to tell him this, he would have known if anything went wrong in the night, but I felt compelled to say it out loud. For both of our benefit.

  I received a grunted reply as my answer.

  Taking the hint, I'd already figured out on previous mornings that Shawn was not much of a talker when he first got up, I kept quiet. By the time that he had finished his breakfast, he was looking decidedly more lively.

  Dusting the crumbs off of his hands, he finally looked my way. "We should get busy. We need to find water and we should take a better look around the camp. Just to be sure that there aren't and nasty surprises waiting out there for us."

  I slid off of my perch on the edge of the desk, ready to get out of the small room. Being shut in, in the oppressive dark, had left me jittery. I was used to more light and freedom, and after nearly an entire day spent in the car just the day before, I was looking forward to being able to move around today. Of course, moving around came with the drawback of having to be on the constant alert for zombies, but way out here in the middle of nowhere, I was hoping that we wouldn't find anything of that variety.

  Our first stop was the kitchen where we made a more thorough search for supplies. It was obvious that the food meant for the campers had started to be brought in, starting with the less time sensitive items. Prepackaged snacks made up most of our find. I opened one cabinet to find giant sized containers of the powdered stuff that was meant to taste like tea with lemon. I hated lemon tea. And there wasn't any water, anyhow.

  I had tried the faucet, but no water came out. Seeing that, Shawn had went to the nearest light switch on the wall. We had long ago agreed not to use lights at night for fear of drawing too much attention, but now he flipped the switch.

  We both looked overhead, at the row of industrial lighting that lined the ceiling.

  Nothing happened. Looking around, in search of anything that may have been turned on by the switch, I felt fingers of unease furl through me. Nothing seemed to have been activated by his flick of that switch. Striding to a refrigerator near me, I pulled the door open. The inside light didn't activate. While not exactly warm in there, it wasn't as cold as a refrigerator should be, either.

  "I think there's no power."

  With a grim look on his face, Shawn answered me, "It was bound to happen, but I was hoping it would take longer."

  I didn't know why it hadn't occurred to me that things like electricity would eventually go away. If there was no one to keep working to provide modern conveniences, those conveniences wouldn't last. I had spent my entire life within city limits, comfortably surrounded by things like electricity and running water. I couldn't fathom living without a flushing toilet.

  Disappointed by our overall lack of success in searching the main building, by mid morning we had moved our search to the smaller outbuildings scattered across the grounds. They had, so far, proven to be all exactly the same. Small, with one window and one door, and three sets of bunk beds holding dusty mattresses crammed inside. That was it. Somewhere around the tenth cabin, I felt myself losing enthusiasm for our task.

  Birds flitted through the thick tree canopy overhead. We had worked our way along the string of cabins, heading deeper and deeper into the forest surrounding the camp. To someone who had spent some time in the woods before, it would probably have been peaceful. To me, it was anything but. The inability to see more than a dozen yards kept me on edge. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was someone or something out there, watching us.

  My palms were sweating. Shifting the kitchen knife that I had grabbed from the kitchen from one hand to the other, I watched around us nervously. So focused on the danger that I feared may be lurking in the trees, that I missed the danger that was right under our noses.

  Taking the two steps up to the newest cabin door, bat slung over his shoulder by one hand, Shawn reached for the cabin door with the other. He had no more than turned the knob when the door burst open and a zombie came leaping through.

  Knocked off of the steps by the force of being hit by the door, Shawn landed on his back in the dirt, a stunned expression on his face. Hissing, tangled hair flying behind her, the zombie landed in a crouch over top of him. Shawn's reflexes brought the bat from his shoulder to use to stop her from advancing any further, but it was at an awkward angle. I could immediately see the strain as he pressed the bat into her chest, just managing to fend off her assault.

  I had watched the two of them fly off of the top step and land in the dirt in shock, unable to believe for a moment what my eyes were telling me. When the zombie screeched a terrible scream, inches from his face, the spit visibly flying from her mouth and into his cringing face, it shocked me out of the immobility that had held me in it's grip.

  "No!" I lunged forward, unsure what I was going to do, but knowing that I had to do something. I couldn't just stand back and watch as the only friend I had left in the world was killed.

  NINETEEN-DAY 9

  The zombie clawed at Shawn in her mindless frenzy to kill. Trapped on the ground in a very compromised position, it was taking all of his concentration to keep her filthy teeth away from his flesh. Bony fingers topped with ragged nails scratched at his chest and neck.

  "Stop!" Rushing forward, I raised the kitchen knife in my hand menacingly. In hindsight, yelling at the zombie wasn't my brightest move. Up until then, she had been focused solely on the body struggling underneath hers. But my yell drew her attention to my approach. Swinging bloodshot eyes my way, she screamed again, making me hesitate.

  I'd never even considered any sort of violence against another person before in my life. Even if the woman in front of me was already dead, I still hesitated to attack her. Taking a weapon and using it against another person went against everything that my life had ever stood for.

  Apparently torn between killing the body she already had pinned, and going for the one standing feet away, the zombie shook her head like a confused dog. She watched me for a long second with unblinking eyes, before making her decision.

  The allure of prey that she already had trapped proved too much. Dismissing me, the zombie returned to her attack on Shawn. Her momentary distraction had allowed him to get a better grip on the bat that he was using to hold her back. Despite her clutching at his shirt with determination, I saw that he was making some progress, driving her face a few precious inches further from his own.

  The demonic sounding hiss that she unleashed raised the hair all over my body. Sweat ran in rivulets, sticking my shirt to my skin and making my already clammy hands slick. Now that I was no longer faced with the dead stare of the woman, I found it somehow easier to readjust my grip o
n the knife and inch closer. If she wasn't staring at me with those too human features, I thought that I might be able to do the unthinkable.

  "Kill it," Shawn hissed at me when I finally made it into his view.

  Looming over the top of the struggling pair, I could clearly see that he was going to lose the battle. It was only a matter of time. The zombie was just too strong. She was unfazed by the length of wood pressing into her chest in a way that should have been painful. She didn't appear tired in the least. Instead, she continued to pull herself toward her goal with determination.

  I raised the knife. Go for the head, I reminded myself. It was a lesson taught by every zombie movie I'd ever watched, and only enforced by the things that I'd seen in the last week. What should have been mortal wounds to other areas of the body had failed to even really slow the zombies down. The only one that had been stopped was the zombie from the office kitchen, and only after a hard crack to the head.

  Aiming, I brought the knife down.

  I learned something in that moment. Putting a knife through a skull is not as easy as it looks on TV. The knife met her head and skidded along the bone with a grinding sensation that made my stomach churn. An ugly gash opened up in it's wake, too thin blood immediately pouring out to run down the back of her shirt.

  Swinging around, the zombie glared malevolently at me. Hissing, she let go of where she had been clutching at Shawn's shoulders and twisted her body. I watched with wide eyes as she gathered herself to lunge my way.

  I reeled back, trying to get out of her reach, but already knowing that I was not going to be fast enough. A hysterical sound escaped my lips as I watched the zombie flying toward me, mouth gaping open and blood stained teeth on display.

  When she suddenly jerked to a stop and flopped unceremoniously to the dirt, I stared uncomprehendingly. I had been sure that those gruesome teeth would be the last thing that I would see.