The First 30 Days: A Zombie Novel

by Lora Powell

  Everyone had crowded around a few windows near the door. Tension crackled in the air as they watched outside.

  I climbed back on my chair. The night outside was still too silent.

  It couldn't have been much more than a minute, maybe two, since that deer charged from the gloom. Now, as we all watched, something else moved in the darkness.

  A lot of something else's.

  Zombies emerged from the fog by the dozen. They stumbled over fallen branches, got tangled in thick briar bushes, and limped along on damaged and rotting limbs. A few still moved with the fluid, fast movements that most of the zombies I'd seen before used, but most of them now more closely resembled the zombie that had managed to break into the cafeteria. I shuddered at the sheer number of them.

  I don't know who gasped to my right, but I could only imagine that whoever it was, was as terrified as I was. We all froze in place, afraid that the smallest movement would give us away to the horde.

  They wandered into the clearing, meandering along, clearly with no destination in mind. The silence was more unnerving than anything else. I had gotten used to the screams and snarls that always seemed to announce their presence. For whatever reason, the zombies outside made none of those noises. A few low growls made it through the walls, but that was all.

  I didn't even want to think of the implications if the zombies became silent predators.

  One uncoordinated zombie tripped over her own feet and crashed onto the hood of the jeep. The noise seemed to stir the others up a bit, and their movements collectively became more hurried. One zombie who still zipped around the clearing with speed, screeched.

  In a domino effect, more growling and screams began to sound. The zombies movements became frenzied as they milled around, disappearing and reappearing in the thick fog.

  "This is bad," Devon breathed so lowly I wasn't sure for a second that I'd heard him.

  "If they hit that door, they're going to get in," Shawn whispered to the group. "It didn't stop a single zombie when it wasn't broken."

  "Is there a back door?"

  "Yes, but it's locked." I answered Maya. The narrow hallway that led past the kitchen and past a pair of bathrooms ended with a door out. A chain and lock kept that door closed, something that originally I had been pleased with because it made me feel safer. I was reevaluating my position on the lock now, though.

  "There has to be a key."

  I pulled my gaze away from the window to look at her, "We haven't found it."

  At that moment, a zombie stumbled it's way up onto the tiny front porch. It clattered around out there, gently bumping into the door and causing it to rattle in it's broken frame. The resigned expression on Maya's face was highlighted by the moonlight coming in through the window.

  "It's time to go." She looked away from the building chaos outside, towards the big man who had been silently watching next to her.

  He nodded slowly. "Yeah, it's time."

  Their group backed away from the windows and melted into the darkness further into the building. Fallon, Shawn, and I were left staring at each other with wide eyes. I was not happy to think about going outside with so many of the undead there. Clearly, I wasn't the only one.

  "Should we go?" I had no idea what was the right decision. Going outside seemed suicidal. But if we became trapped inside by this many zombies, we were as good as dead, too.

  "I don't want to go out there."

  "I think we need to go."

  They answered me at the same time. I looked back and forth between them, my head spinning with possibilities. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

  A harder thump rattled the door and the zombie on the porch snarled.

  My mind was made up instantly. The zombies seemed intent on hanging around the camp. It was only a matter of time before they got in. Even if they never got inside, with so many of them prowling the area, going out for food and water would be dangerous.

  Maya had been right. It was time to go.

  I said so and turned to follow their retreat. Shawn immediately fell into step beside me. A second later, Fallon's booted steps sounded behind us. Unhappy as she was about going outside, I had no doubt that she was more afraid of being alone again.

  It became pitch black as we got further from the windows, slowing us down. I held a hand out in front of me, afraid of running into something in the darkness. By the time we made it down the narrow hallway, I was feeling along the wall to keep oriented.

  A whisper of noise ahead of me stood the hair up on the back of my neck, images of just what could be lurking ahead in mind. Suddenly, a bright light turned on directly in my face.

  "Thank God, it's you. I wasn't sure." Carrie turned the blinding light away from me and toward where the rest of her group was crowded around the chained door.

  "Can you pick it?" Maya whispered to Bill.

  He looked at the lock intently for several long seconds before answering. "I don't know. Maybe."

  Maya produced something from her pack that I couldn't see in the crush of bodies, and he took it and went to work on the lock.

  I had no idea what exactly it took to pick a lock, but their group seemed like this was something that they had done before. I kept quiet and worried about what would happen if he couldn't get the lock open. And I worried about what would happen if he could.

  The door was solid, giving no way to look outside before it was opened. What if the zombies had found their way around to the back of the building? We would run outside and straight into them. I gripped my knife a little harder and looked nervously behind me. The glow from the flashlight didn't reach that far, and I couldn't see my friends.

  A familiar hand reached out to settle lightly on my shoulder, making a little of the anxiety ease up. Shawn must have noticed my building panic.

  An excited murmur ahead was followed by the rattle of chains being removed from their place on the door.

  They'd done it. The back door was unlocked.

  "Is everyone ready?" Bill looked around to each of us. When no one objected, Carrie switched off the flashlight. "Ok."

  The door opened silently, something I would be eternally grateful for, and moonlight spilled into the hallway. At the front, Bill hesitated, peering out into the night cautiously. He had just taken his first step outside when a crash from out in the cafeteria told us that the zombies had made it inside.

  "Go!" Fallon hissed from behind me, and we all surged out into the night.

  The air was heavy with moisture and the stench of so many rotting corpses was like a slap in the face. I felt like I was too close to hyperventilating as I crept along behind Carrie. The fog made it impossible to see more than a few feet away. I didn't want to lose sight of anyone, afraid I'd never see them again.

  Out of the shifting white curtain, to my right, a shuffling zombie materialized. It was already upon us by the time we saw it and I gasped as it set it's sights on Devon. The zombie growled as it reached for him. I watched, horrified, sure he was going to be bit. Then the zombie slumped to the ground in a heap.

  Blinking rapidly, I had to stare for a second to be sure that my eyes weren't playing a cruel trick on me.

  Carrie leaned over the zombie, tugging to release a machete from where she had sunk it into the zombies skull.

  THIRTY-ONE-DAY 17

  We were all tired of being soaked to the skin. The trees all around us seemed like they would never end, and they dripped constantly with the light rain that was determined to constantly fall from the sky. Huddled together under a particularly thick old tree, we did our best to shield ourselves from the chilling rain.

  It wasn't really working.

  "That was the longest night, ever." Fallon groaned. Shifting slightly, she attempted to stretch out muscles that must have been stiff from spending the night crunched up in the cold. I certainly felt like I'd gone a couple of rounds with a professional fighter, and lost big time.

  "Does anyone know how far it is between towns out her
e? Devon?" Carrie asked as she stretched too.

  "Um, I'm not sure exactly how far up the road the next town is. It takes about twenty minutes to get there by car."

  A shred of hope lit in me at hearing his words. If it took about twenty minutes to drive from Devon's home to the next town over, it couldn't have been more than 15 miles between towns. We had walked along the road for hours the day before, and before that, had been trying to work our way in that direction through the forest. Granted, that first night and day in the trees, we had been hopelessly lost and could have been traveling in a variety of directions. Still, the town couldn't be that much further up the road.

  "We have to be getting close." Shawn echoed my thoughts.

  "I think we are, but I'm not sure. The trees all kinda look the same."

  Devon wasn't kidding. I had been very relieved when we finally stumbled on the little road the day before. The close trees and foreboding sky had made me feel trapped. The open road gave us a bit of breathing room, and a sure direction to travel.

  Someone started passing around one of our few remaining bottles of water and I took a few small sips when it made it to me. In an unspoken agreement, our two groups had merged into one, sharing our limited resources and watching out for each other. I was grateful for the four new people, even if their coming to our camp was probably what had led the horde of zombies to us in the first place. They certainly hadn't meant to get our hideout overrun, and their skills had been what kept us alive that first night as we desperately tried to avoid the undead in the thick fog. The time that they had spent on the road had taught them more about killing zombies than the rest of us had learned while hiding in the camp.

  Not that that meant that we were completely helpless. We had encountered a few zombies wandering in the trees, and all of us had taken out at least one of them by now. The rotting, overall wearing man-zombie that had been my second ever kill, had been just as terrifying as the camp zombie. But I had managed to get the job done.

  "We should probably get moving." Bill interrupted my thoughts.

  Everyone climbed to their feet with audibly protesting joints. A long series of cracks from my own spine accompanied my standing up. My sneakers squished uncomfortably and water trickled down my neck from my hair. While a town came with a higher number of zombies, it also had shelter from the rain and food. After a couple of days spent never managing to get dry, having a roof overhead and some dry clothes sounded worth the risk.

  The backpack that I had slung over one shoulder was getting lighter. Seven people went through a lot of food, and there wasn't much left. Following the rest of the group down the steep bank that led back onto the pavement, I unzipped the bag and pulled out one of the remaining granola bars. While I held the bag out, everyone else took their share. When I put the bag back on my back, it felt completely empty. Maya's bag was still full, but I was fairly sure that she had mostly packed things like medical supplies, with maybe some food and water filling up the remaining space.

  Walking along the road was infinitely easier than traversing the forest had been, and we were covering a lot more ground. We walked for maybe an hour before a curve in the road appeared ahead.

  "This is it. The town is just around that corner," Devon excitedly told us as he sped up.

  "Devon, wait!" I knew, of all of us, he had had the hardest time these last couple of days. His leg hadn't really had time to heal, and he was walking with a more pronounced limp now than he had been when we first met him. Thoughts of finding a dry place where he could rest were probably all that crossed his mind. But we needed to approach the town with caution.

  The bend in the road wasn't far, and before long we were rounding the corner, and a town that was even smaller than the other one came into view. If that was even possible. The streets were silent. Cautiously moving forward, our group worked our way into the town.

  Someone had been killing zombies here. It was the only explanation for what I saw. In the road, zombies with bullet holes to the head slumped where they had fallen. In the driveway to my right, someone had dumped what must have been at least a dozen corpses together in a reeking pile. Ahead, a crow pecked at the remains of someone who had died wearing a single fluffy pink slipper.

  Skirting around a rain diluted pool of blood that had come from the zombie nearest to me, I looked around warily and stayed close to the rest of the group. This place had an eerie feeling to it.

  The main street was basically rows of closely spaced homes on either side of the road. No one stood out from the others, the houses stretching out ahead of us before ending abruptly. The trees on the other end of the town looked just as formidable as the ones that we had left behind us. I kept looking for any sort of store, even a small gas station, but there didn't seem to be anything like that here. Just the houses. It was really bizarre to someone who had grown up surrounded by city concrete, town houses, and carefully planned suburbs.

  I almost bumped into Bill's back when he came to a sudden stop just in front of me. "Well, does anyone have a preference for which one we try?" He gestured around himself.

  We all looked around, but the sameness of each of the houses made them all practically indistinguishable, from my view. Blank stares and shrugged shoulders seemed to indicate that everyone else felt the same.

  "Alright." Critically eyeing the two nearest homes, Bill settled on the one on our left, and we moved up the short driveway together.

  Keeping her voice low, Maya gave a quick explanation of the routine that they had adopted when breaking into a new place, to the three of us. "We need to try to see if there are any zombies inside. If there are, we'll move on to another house. It's not worth the risk of letting them out with us. If it seems clear, we'll go in and first we need to search the entire house. Just to be sure. If it's clear, we can set up camp and look for any supplies that might be useful."

  I nodded unconsciously while listening. Her words all made sense. By that point, Bill was standing at the front door of the house, and Carrie had went to one of the windows. When Bill knocked lightly on the door, she peered inside. After several seconds, Bill knocked again.

  "It looks empty." Carrie looked back toward the rest of us.

  "I don't hear anything."

  "Guys, this place gives me the creeps. Let's get inside and off of the street." Maya had been facing away from the house, watching our backs. She glanced over her shoulder to us to punctuate her words. When she turned back around, I saw her gaze go to the pile of zombies that was still visible back the way we had come.

  People were nothing if not predictable, and a quick search near the front door revealed a key that had been hidden under a flower pot on the steps. Shawn handed the key up to Bill, and he used it to unlock the front door. He pushed the door open and stood at the threshold for a second. The inside of the home was deathly silent. My eagerness to finally get out of the rain warred with the fear of the unknown as we crept inside.

  The people who had lived in this house had obviously taken great pride in it. We fanned out, splitting into smaller groups as we searched for any danger. Shawn and I worked our way through the small living room together, and I couldn't help but notice that everything had been left neat and very clean. Other than a faint unpleasant odor that I couldn't place, you would never know that the world had gone to hell outside, if the only thing you had to go by was this living room.

  I could hear the others as they worked their way around the house. No sounds of alarm or struggle sounded, increasing my confidence that the house had indeed been empty. I was sure that, if there was a zombie lurking around inside, we would have found it before now. At the other end of the room from me, Shawn peered behind the couch. His actions might have seemed silly, but it was better to be safe than sorry, even if there was not much chance that a zombie was lurking back there. A short, dark hallway led off of the back corner of the living room, and I walked towards it with more confidence. The lighting was low, but there was enough for me to see that a wash
er and dryer stood against the wall along the hall. A closed door at the far end was the only other way into the space.

  Shifting my knife into my other hand, I tiptoed down the narrow space past the appliances, and reached for the doorknob. It was likely just a closet, but every corner needed to be checked, and I wasn't going to be the one who got lazy and failed to open every door.

  Turning the knob, I pushed the door open.

  Low growling sounded from the pitch black space beyond.

  THIRTY-TWO-DAY 17

  A horrible smell came from the darkness in front of me as I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust my eyes enough to see what was coming.

  Backpedaling, I banged into the side of the washer, sending a metallic bang echoing down the hall. The growling continued, but the expected attack never came.

  "Bri!" Hands yanking me further backwards, I found myself shoved behind Shawn as he waited for the zombie to emerge from the room with bat raised. The others began rushing into the living room, drawn by the commotion, as I peered around his shoulder, not wanting to take my eye from the dark doorway.

  Something about the sound of the growl was nagging at the corners of my mind, but the rush of fear wasn't letting me think clearly. When the low sound cut off, I was still trying to figure out just why the growls bothered me.

  "What the..." the bat lowered a fraction as we caught sight of the shadowy form that was slinking into the hall.

  "It's a dog."

  The dog came into the hallway with cautious steps, head low as he eyed us with wary curiosity. His ears and legs seemed too big for his body, making him look almost comical. I realized why that was a second later. The dog was very thin.

  His ribs and hip bones jutted out against the black and tan coat. The limited light glinted off of a chain collar that hung loosely around his shrunken neck. Sympathy swelled inside me for the creature that had been apparently left shut in the dark room for weeks. I had been trying not to think about the fate of so many animals that had been left with no one to care for them, the thought of their suffering made me want to cry every time, but standing in front of me now was the cruel reality of the situation. The most helpless of those around us were suffering horribly.