by Lora Powell
Shaking my head no was one of the hardest things I could remember having to do. One bottle of water in an entire day was not enough. I had tried to make it last, but I had run out in the middle of the night. Eyeing his outstretched hand, and the liquid relief he held in it, I forced my mouth to form the right words. "No, we agreed. That one is for both of us."
He grabbed my hand and placed the bottle in it. "I'm good, for now. Besides, I've been thinking about this situation all night. We are going to have to come up with a better source of water, today. I think I know where we should look for answers." When I just stared at him for a second, he continued. "There has got to be some sort of wilderness survival guide on these shelves." His hand swept out to indicate to loaded bookshelf on the far wall.
Swinging my gaze to the books, I felt like giving myself a good kick in the rear. Why hadn't it occurred to me that the books found in a wilderness summer camp for kids would likely be a treasure trove of information useful to our situation? I began scanning the titles on the spines. In only a matter of seconds, I pulled a likely candidate from it's place. Thumbing through the pages, another grin split my features. This was exactly what we had been looking for.
* * *
I grimaced down at the corpse of the camp counselor zombie. Despite neither of us being too excited to come back out here, we had made the walk down the wooded path, back to the last cabin that we checked yesterday. In my haste to get Shawn back to the office and clean up his scratches, I had totally forgotten about the bat that he had dropped in the grass. We were going to have to drive back into that hole in the wall that the locals called a town, and he was going to need it.
Flies buzzed around the crusty wounds that my knife had left on her skull. When I glanced up at the cabin door, still standing open, all I could picture was the moment when she came barreling out of the door and knocked Shawn off of the steps.
I couldn't wait to get away from here.
"Ok, got it. Let's go." Straightening up with the bat in hand, Shawn checked to be sure that I had heard him and started back the way we had come. I didn't hesitate to follow.
Scanning through the survival guide, I'd quickly found exactly what we needed. The chapter on purifying water had been simple. We either needed to boil the water for ten minutes, or drop four drops of bleach into a quart and wait for a half an hour. Either solution would be well within our grasp, provided we could come up with a few basic necessities.
Thoroughly searching the entire building, we had been surprised to not be able to find a single box of matches or bottle of bleach. There had been a closet stuffed full of all sorts of cleaning chemicals, but no bleach. I guess we'd used up all of our luck earlier when Shawn somehow didn't turn into a zombie overnight.
Luckily, even though it looked for all of the world like we were a hundred miles from anywhere, we were actually only a small drive from a bit of civilization. There had to be someplace there to find what we needed.
The drive back out of the mountains left me feeling edgy. I couldn't forget the gang of zombies that we had seen before. They would still be out there, along with however many more people had turned in the town. Just because there were less of them than we had faced in the city, didn't mean that they were less dangerous. Noticing my plummeting mood, Shawn tried to cheer me up. "There was a little store on the back of that diner, next to the gas pump. I'll bet we will find everything that we need in there. Won't take more than a few minutes, and we'll be back in the jeep and out of there."
I gave him a weak smile. A few minutes was a long time, long enough for the zombies to find us. But I wasn't going to say that, so I kept my thoughts to myself.
The trees ended and we were back in the open air of the main street. After only a little over a day, my eyes had already adjusted to the dimmer light in the trees. The midday sun felt blinding, making me blink rapidly. By the time my sight had cleared up, we were already pulling into the spacious parking area surrounding our destination.
There was a big truck that had been abandoned in the parking lot, but other than it, the lot stood empty. Shawn pulled right up next to the glass door leading into the store. He seemed to debate with himself for a second, before leaving the engine running. I had been eyeing the store with distrust, but scurried to climb out when I realized that I was the only one still in the jeep. I didn't like what we were doing at all, but I wasn't going to let him go out there on his own. Not when I had so recently gotten a vivid idea of how I would feel if I were to lose him.
The sign on the door read open. I could clearly see from outside that calling the room through that door a store, was generous. I was fairly certain that the living room that I had shared with Evie was larger. When Shawn pulled on the door, it swung open with a cheery sounding jingle. Eyeing the bells hanging from the top with my best death glare, I followed him inside.
My first impression had been spot on. A single shelf ran down the center of the store and was loaded with every kind of snack food and candy known to man. The outer walls of the store were also lined with shelves, these loaded with everything from cat food to windshield washer fluid. The upside to it, it only took a matter of seconds to find the shelf holding the cleaning stuff. Triumphantly, I pulled several of the pint sized bottles of bleach from the shelf.
Turning around, I found Shawn stuffing packages of beef jerky into the bag that he had brought along. When I stepped up to his side, he looked my way.
"Got them," I held the bleach in my arms, trying to hold onto all of the bottles and my knife.
"Good. I found matches, and a few other things that we might be able to use." He glanced behind us, back to the Jeep. "I think that we should get out of here."
I couldn't have agreed more. The edgy feeling that I had had since we decided that we would have to come back into town had gotten worse. Now that we had the means to make water from the stream safe to drink, all I really wanted was to go back and hide again. It felt way too exposed out here.
Those infernal bells loudly jangled again on our way out. I jumped at the sound. Muttering under my breath, I dropped the bottles of bleach into the back seat before climbing back in the front. Shawn had dropped his bag in the back too, and was behind the wheel ready to make our escape, when the woman came running around the corner of the diner.
Three zombies sprinted after her.
TWENTY-THREE-DAY 10
She was probably younger than me, and the look of absolute terror on her face eliminated any thoughts I was having that she was anything but human very quickly.
"Hang on," Shawn was watching out the window with a look of serious concentration on his face. Guessing at what he was planning, I grabbed for the dash in an attempt to steady myself. I hadn't had time to put on my seatbelt yet. The tires squealed as the jeep lurched forward, towards the girl. It only took a second before he spun the car sideways, expertly stopping it broadside to the running girl and giving her a clear shot at the back door. The maneuver left me wondering where he learned to drive like that, but the thought only had a brief chance to flash through my mind before the girl wrenched the door open and dove inside.
The trio of zombies had been right behind her. She didn't have time to get the door closed before one of them was reaching inside. The girl grappled with the door, trying to pull it shut, but the creature had managed to get it's head and shoulders too far in. The smell that rolled off of the zombie instantly filled the interior, making me fight back a gag. Each time I encountered one of them, they seemed to be even more revolting than the last. The ear splitting shriek that it blasted us with made my blood run cold as I envisioned just how bad being trapped inside of a vehicle with a zombie would get.
Cursing, Shawn stomped on the accelerator, and the jeep lurched forward. The other two zombies bounced off of the side as they tried in vain to find a way in.
The rotting zombie lost it's footing as the car shot forward. Letting go of her death grip on the door, the girl swung around in a move that I wasn't sure I c
ould have pulled off, and planted both booted feet squarely in the zombie's face. Kicking hard, she sent it flying the rest of the way out the door.
I had turned around in my seat to watch the struggle, holding up the knife and trying desperately to figure out a way to defend us if the zombie actually made it all of the way into the backseat. Behind us, the zombie rolled and tumbled along the pavement, tripping one of the others who had been chasing us at top speed. Reaching out, the girl grabbed the open door and slammed it shut, before slumping back into the seat.
Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing in gasps. Closing her eyes, she visibly tried to get her breathing under control. I took the second her eyes were closed to look her over. I had been right, she probably wasn't any older than seventeen or eighteen. Shoulder length, nearly black hair was in a wild tangle all over her head, prompting me to wonder briefly what my own, longer locks must look like by now. I was guessing that her skin was that beautiful, perpetually tanned olive tone that had always left me a little jealous, though it was hard to tell because of all of the dirt.
I glanced over at Shawn, who had been switching between driving us away from this deathtrap of a town and trying to watch the newest member in the mirror. He glanced at me and I noticed the worried crinkle of his forehead.
It didn't occur to me until that moment that we had just let a complete stranger into the backseat. She didn't look all that dangerous, but looks could be deceiving. Every zombie show ever created had made it clear that people were your most dangerous enemy during an apocalypse. What if she was crazy? What if she was some sort of a decoy? What if she had been bitten?
A little alarmed now, I looked back at the girl just in time to see her open wide brown eyes. She focused on the two of us in the front for the first time. "Thank you."
Shawn looked in the mirror at her again, a slight frown mostly hidden behind the beard that was starting to grow out of control on his face. "You're welcome."
I looked down at my own stained clothes and only slightly less dirty fingers. I hadn't been anywhere near a mirror in a couple of days, but I was guessing that we weren't any cleaner than the girl in the backseat.
"I'm Fallon. You two just saved my life." She pulled herself up a little straighter in the seat. "I don't think I could have kept running for much longer." She sounded like she really meant what she said.
"I'm Bri. This is Shawn," I chimed in. My instincts had always been pretty good about people, and they were saying that Fallon wasn't anything to be scared of. She was just like us, struggling to stay alive in a world gone mad.
I noticed that Shawn studied me for a second before nodding almost imperceptibly. By then, we had already made is several miles back into the mountains. So suddenly that I almost toppled from my backwards perch on the seat, he braked the jeep. Stopping in the middle of the desolate road, he threw the vehicle into park and turned around to face Fallon. "Are you bit?"
If the abrupt question caught her off guard, she didn't let it show. Shaking her head, "No. None of them got close enough."
I couldn't find any trace of deceit on her face. Apparently, neither could he. Looking at me again, we shared a moment of silent communication where I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Taking a stranger back to our hideout was a gamble, but could either of us live with ourselves if we left this girl behind? I couldn't help but think about how Jack and Shawn had found me in that restroom, bloody and exhausted, and still a little clueless about exactly how bad things actually were. Neither of them had known a thing about me, but they had given me a chance, probably saving my life in the process.
Really, the decision had already been made for us, and we both knew it.
Turning back around, he put the car back into gear and kept going. I noticed some of the tension leave the stiff set of Fallon's shoulders as she seemed to realize that we weren't planning to kick her out of the vehicle. I sat down in my seat myself, keeping my torso twisted so I could still see the girl in the backseat. "There's a place we've been staying. It's not far."
She nodded her head and pulled the bag that she had been sitting on top of out from underneath herself, dumping it next to her on the seat. I hoped that there hadn't been anything breakable in there, not that she had had time to move the thing before diving into the jeep. "Thank you," she said again. "I've been hiding different places in town for a few days, but none of them lasted for very long. I don't, um," She hesitated, a flash of some unhappy memory crossing her face, before finishing the thought. "I don't have anyone left and after my car ran out of gas up on the highway, I started walking. I ended up here. It seemed like it would be a safe place to stay at first. But I guess no place is safe anymore."
I nodded at her in understanding. For a brief time, I had dared to hope that the camp would be safe. But that lone zombie had set me straight on that in a hurry. There was no such thing as safe, anymore. Only marginally less dangerous.
TWENTY-FOUR-DAY 11
Fallon splashed in the water behind me. My shirt stuck to me, wet from the water still dripping off of my hair. I peeled the material away from my skin. I'd always hated that feeling. But I was willing to put up with it for now because there was no way I was standing on the side of this stream without my clothes.
More splashing came from nearby, Shawn taking advantage of the opportunity to try to get some of the dirt off, too. For the first time in several days, we had time for a luxury like a bath. Even if you could hardly call it a bath by my normal standards. The stream water that we had treated with bleach smelled like the chemical, but so far, hadn't made anyone sick. All three of us had downed bottle after bottle of the stuff yesterday, making up for days of dehydration.
A branch snapped nearby, making me come to attention. I was acting as the lookout while the other two got cleaned up. If a zombie was anywhere nearby, it was up to me to protect them.
Looking in the direction of the sound, I peered through the trees. After nearly a minute, with no more sounds and no signs of danger, I relaxed again. There were more random noises in the woods than I would have guessed, something that I still wasn't used to. Every time a branch creaked or a squirrel chattered, I found myself bracing for an attack.
I heard Shawn splash his way back to the bank, and a minute later he appeared at my side, using a small towel to rub the water from his hair. He smiled at me before taking up a spot just a few feet away, scanning our surroundings. We stood like that in an amicable silence while I listened to Fallon finishing her own bath up behind us.
We'd only known Fallon for less than a day. A bit reluctantly, Shawn had agreed to her request to let her take a turn on watch overnight. I knew he hadn't actually slept while she was on guard, though I didn't say anything. Truth be told, I had been reluctant to go to sleep without Shawn watching my back, too. But through the open door between the nurse's room and our office, I had seen how seriously she seemed to be taking the duty. She had remained alert, pacing between the door wedged closed by the chair and the high window, constantly checking for any sign of danger. After a couple of hours, I started to feel silly for doubting her.
It amazed me how quickly Shawn and I had become "us", everyone else falling into the "them" category. It hadn't escaped my notice that I was completely trusting someone who I had known for less than a week, while finding it difficult to extend the same trust to another newcomer. I had always felt that actions spoke louder than words, and while Shawn may have been a stranger just a week ago, in the short time we had known each other, he had proven himself over and over. I had no doubt that he would have my back in any situation we came across.
I didn't feel the same about Fallon, even though she had done nothing to warrant my mistrust. Maybe that would change with time, but for now, there was only one person I wanted watching my back.
Before long, the three of us were making our way back to the main camp building. Walking along, I kept having to pull my jeans up as they sagged. While we had been eating, it wasn't enough. I'd notice
d that I wasn't the only one losing visible weight. Either we could eat well now, but run out of the food we had managed to gather sooner. Or we could ration ourselves, and have something to eat longer. There really wasn't much of a choice there. I had no idea what we would do for food once our supplies did run out. It's not like I'd ever grown a garden or killed an animal before. My lunch had come nicely prepackaged from the grocery store for all of my life.
After our run in with the three zombies in town the day before, none of us was in a hurry to go back. I tried not to think about the fact that we were going to have to go back eventually. If for no other reason, to search that tiny town for things like canned goods and the various supplies that would be necessary to stay alive in this new world. You never knew just how easy electricity and running water made life until it was taken away.
My attention was pulled to the girl walking just ahead of me. Wet hair wrapped up in a towel, Fallon walked through the brush with ease, as if this was not her first time doing such a thing. She dodged thorns and stepped over obstacles partially hidden under long dead leaves with the ease of practice. I couldn't help but compare her progress to my own, as I tripped over a buried rock and snagged my jeans on a thorn bush, again. Carefully pulling the wickedly jagged branch free from my leg, I hurried to catch up to the others. There was no way I wanted to find myself alone in the trees, even if we were only a short walk back to the camp office. The forest was still way too creepy.
We had only questioned Fallon a little about herself the day before. So I didn't know much about the girl, but it was easy to tell just by comparing her actions to my own, that she had a different skill set than I did. While I had cringed at the first bottle of creek water, my extreme thirst the only reason I finally gave in and drank it, she hadn't hesitated to tilt a bottle back and finish it in a few long pulls. Even now, up in the front, Shawn could occasionally be heard muttering under his breath about something that he had stepped on or gotten snagged in, and it was plainly obvious that I was no good in the woods. But Fallon moved through the trees and thorns like it was second nature. Plus, she had survived on her own for who knew how many days, something that I wasn't so sure I could have accomplished.