The First 30 Days: A Zombie Novel

by Lora Powell

  I opened my own lips to tell him so, when a shout from the front seat cut me off.

  "Bill!"

  Maya brought the van to a screeching halt and practically threw herself towards her husband. Mass confusion reigned as everyone began trying to figure out what was going on at the same time. Lurching forward, I leaned over the front seats to try to get a look.

  It was hard to see over Maya as her body blocked my view. I was shouting for her to tell me what was happening, but she ignored my questions. Frantically talking to her husband, she did something that I couldn't see because of the angles.

  Climbing across a confused Shawn, I slid open the side door and jumped from the van. Whatever was going on up front, it was bad, and I needed to see. Ignoring his exclamation to stay inside, I hit the pavement, with the sounds of more feet and the click of dog toenails following me.

  Flinging open the passenger door, I looked at Bill.

  The first thing I saw was the blood. It had run down the side of the seat and soaked the carpet of the vehicle. Following the trail with my eyes, I found Maya's hands pressing against his shirt. A shirt that was stained bright red with fresh blood.

  FORTY-FOUR-DAY 22

  Blood coated my hands, rising up my forearms, and dried on my shirt. Completely spent, I sat with my knees drawn up, uncaring that the hard pavement was unforgiving on my backside. Resting my arms on my knees, I couldn't tear my gaze away from the blood that had dried on my hands.

  "Let me take a look at this."

  Shawn's fingers passed lightly over my skin, just above the gouges into my shoulders. Without the strength left in me to do anything but obey, I woodenly reached for the tail of my shirt and pulled it up around my neck.

  I dimly registered his sharp inhale, but my mind was elsewhere.

  "Maya, let me see! You have to let me look at the wound so I know how bad it is."

  I already knew it was bad. The amount of blood that had pooled in the van wouldn't have been good coming from a healthy person. Bill had already been in bad shape from the first gun shot.

  Finally managing to move her hands, I saw exactly where the second bullet had hit. The right side of his chest, lower than the first shot which had hit him in the shoulder.

  "Ok, let's get him out of the van. I need to check for an exit wound. Fallon, bring me anything that we have that may be remotely useful."

  My back stung as I felt Shawn doing the best he could to clean it up. A trickle of water ran down and soaked into the waistband of my jeans. I knew that we were down to our last half a bottle of clean water, and I wanted to tell him to save it, but it seemed like too much effort.

  Rolling Bill over slightly, I searched his back. There was only one hole back there. The second bullet was still inside him. Trying not to panic, I eased him back down. Blood was still trickling from his wounds and was already starting to stain the pavement, but the flow was slowing. I wasn't all together sure that that was a good thing.

  "This is it. They cleaned everything else out of the van," Fallon dropped my nearly empty backpack next to me and held out the small first aid kit that had been in the glove box.

  "I think these need stitches, but this will have to do for now." The burning increased as he wiped antibacterial ointment from the first aid kit into the wounds.

  Rex hadn't left my side since I climbed out of the van. My crimson stained hands were again resting in front of my eyes. Moving in front of me, he nudged my hand with his nose.

  Using my knife, I cut the remnants of his shirt away. The wound to his shoulder was no longer bleeding, but it looked angry. A circle of red was growing around it.

  The shot to his chest, however, was still bleeding. It took precedence. I wasn't sure how much more blood he could lose. Clamping a hand holding his waded up shirt to the wound, I handed my knife off to Shawn.

  "There's water in my bag. Clean this off as well as you can."

  "What are you going to do?" Maya looked up from where she was crouched over her husband's head. I could read the anguish in her eyes as they pleaded with me to do something.

  "I, uh, I'm going to have to get the bullet out and stop the bleeding," My voice shook at the thought of what I was about to do.

  "Wait. You're going to use your knife to cut into him? Is that safe? It's been used on zombies," Fallon looked from the knife in question to where I knelt next to Bill.

  "I don't have a choice."

  The paper wrappers off of the band aids crinkled. Meticulously placing a row of them down my back, Shawn covered the wounds the best he could.

  He tugged my shirt back down and scooted around to sit next to me.

  My hands were shaking. Bill had only been semi conscious since we pulled him from the van, but he was completely passed out now. The pain from me digging around in his wound with a finger, looking for the bullet, had been the last straw.

  I hadn't found the offending piece of metal, and now I was poised to use the knife on my friend.

  The blood began to flow again as I cut. Suppressing a curse, I tried to work faster.

  "Here, let me see your hand."

  I allowed him to use the damp material to scrub at the drying blood. My eyes began to wander.

  Still laying in the same place on the pavement, Bill was unmoving. Sitting with his head in her lap, Maya leaned brokenly over him. Her shoulders shook as she cried.

  Standing a few feet away, Fallon and Devon stood watch over our group.

  "I think I found it."

  My muttered sentence was more for my own benefit than anything else. I had been starting to worry that I wouldn't find the bullet. But the tip of my knife had just scraped across something hard. I was fairly sure it wasn't bone.

  Carefully working the knife, I pried the hard object free. The mangled metal popped out of the wound.

  Such a small object, but one that had caused so much damage.

  "Bri. You did the best you could, better than any of us could have done."

  I slowly turned to meet his eyes.

  I had done the best I could, but I was frightened that my best wasn't going to be good enough.

  It had seemed to take forever to get the bleeding to slow down again. The wound was ragged and ugly now that I had dug around inside it. I had smeared a generous glob of our one tube of antibacterial ointment inside and then taped the largest pad of gauze on top.

  With a sigh, I noted than a tinge of red began to bleed through the white in seconds.

  There wasn't a lot I could do with the limited supplies on hand. Not that I was a real doctor, anyhow.

  I moved to do what I could for the first gunshot.

  Needing comfort, I leaned slowly sideways until my shoulder rested against Shawn's.

  "What if he doesn't make it?" I whispered my fears out loud.

  The shoulder supporting me lifted in a sigh. "Then we will deal with it. That's all we can do."

  "He hasn't woken up yet."

  "No. But maybe that's a blessing. When he does wake up, he's going to be in a lot of pain."

  I felt a hot tear run down my face and drip from my chin.

  "Bri, listen to me. We would all be dead by now if it wasn't for you. Those people were not going to let us go. We all owe you our lives. Maybe Bill won't ever wake up, but you need to know that if he doesn't, it will not be because of you."

  FORTY-FIVE-DAY 22

  The bone chilling scream sounded from not so far away, causing all of us to leap to our feet. An answering shriek sounded, even closer than the first.

  The pair of zombies bolted out of the trees beyond the far side of the highway. Fast ones.

  It had been stupid of us to sit out there, exposed like we were. That was my first thought. The second was prompted by Rex, as he began running to meet the zombie in the lead.

  I had been so preoccupied for the last day that I had completely forgotten to worry if zombie blood was dangerous to dogs. The answer seemed to be no, but that was of little comfort at the moment, as I watched
the dog run towards danger.

  I grabbed the machete and bolted after him. Fallon had been hanging on to my knife, she'd picked it up after I discarded it, unwilling to hang on to it's bloodied handle for another second. As the only two people in our group with weapons, we were going to be on the front line for this one.

  "Bri, wait!"

  I ignored the call. Ahead of me, Rex leaped to collide with the first zombie.

  This time, the zombie was much fresher, and it stayed on it's feet. The dog had latched onto it's arm with a death grip, but the zombie seemed more irritated than pained by his bite. The creature cocked it's head sideways and studied the dog for a fraction of a second. Then it snapped it's teeth his way and reached for him with it's free hand.

  My sneakers pounded onto the second wide strip of highway as the second zombie reached the fight. Rex had his hands full tangling with the first one, and I took the last few steps as fast as I could push myself. A little wildly, I swung the machete. My aim was off and I sliced into the second zombie's neck instead of it's head.

  The machete cut deep, but not deep enough. The zombie's head stayed attached to it's body, and the creature turned from it's assault on the dog to me. Hissing like some sort of demonic, enraged feline, it lunged my way. My second strike with the machete was worse than the first and sunk into it's shoulder. I cringed, expecting the zombie to run into me full force, but instead I heard it collapse onto the pavement.

  Fallon stood over the corpse, my knife sticking out of it's skull, panting like she had run a marathon. With one zombie down, I turned my attention back to the one that Rex had effectively detained.

  Still hanging onto it's arm, he jerked his head back and forth, shredding the muscle between his teeth. Hissing and spitting, the zombie had gone on the defensive and seemed to just want to escape the dog's grasp. My aim was better the third time and the zombie stood little chance at getting out of my way while anchored by the dog.

  I turned to run back to the van, we needed to get out of there before we found out if the noise had drawn unwanted attention, and almost ran into Shawn. Holding a tire iron, he skidded to a stop next to me. "We've got to go."

  Nodding, I started jogging with the others, back toward the van. Maya and Devon were standing guard nervously over Bill's prone form. Their conspicuous lack of weapons reminded me just how bad our situation really was. "Let's get Bill in the van and get out of here."

  It wasn't an easy task, moving the biggest member of the group. Trying our best not to jar his wounds any more than we had to, we somehow managed to lay him across the back seat. He was far too tall, and we ended up letting his legs dangle off of the seat and resting his feet on the floor.

  Maya squeezed herself into the remaining floor space back there, and Devon and Fallon climbed into the middle seat, which left Shawn and I in the front. I tried not to think about the sticky stains all over the seat and floor as I got in.

  Rex insisted on climbing into my foot space, despite the mess and the fact that he was too big to really fit there, but I didn't want to waste time trying to convince the dog to move to the back. He was already splashed with blood anyhow from tangling with the zombies. Some was his, but most I knew was zombie gore.

  I saw Shawn dart his eyes at the dog, specifically, the blood splattered teeth he exposed as he panted. He was wondering the same things that I had, I was sure of it.

  "It's ok. This isn't the first time," I tried to reassure everyone.

  Nodding, Shawn started the van and we continued our flight south.

  * * *

  The van was running on fumes, but we didn't dare stop and try to find more gas. The numbers of zombies we were seeing had increased dramatically.

  The signs along the side of the road bore semi familiar names. The towns that we had been passing for a while now were large enough for someone not from this area to have heard of them. It explained the rise in numbers of zombies, anyhow. But it didn't solve our problem.

  It was only a matter of time before we would have to stop, or we would run out of gas completely.

  I peered over my shoulder anxiously for what felt like the hundredth time, but the far back of the van was still silent. We had been driving for hours, but Bill hadn't moved at all.

  "I'm going to take the next exit that is reasonably empty of zombies." Shawn glanced my way with worried eyes. "We are going to be stopping soon, no matter what, and I don't want to run out of gas while we're surrounded with nowhere to go." His voice sounded rough, like his throat had been sandblasted.

  Nodding, I looked back at the pair in the middle seats. My friends were going on two days now without rest, food, or even any water.

  We needed to find a place with water.

  Licking my own sunburned and chapped lips, I answered. "There has to be a place we can hide that hasn't been cleaned out yet."

  Barely a mile later, an exit appeared. We dodged the couple of zombies that were in our way. One of them bounced off of my door as it tried to get inside, but I didn't even flinch. Zombie collisions had become an all too common occurrence in the last hour. It was almost funny when I thought back to the very first zombie that had tried to get through a car window at me, back at the start. I had been terrified.

  I sat up straight in my seat as we coasted down the ramp and turned toward a small city. We had begun to pass the city a few miles ago. From the highway, I had been able to see the large burned out section where fire had obviously raged uncontrollably. The buildings had been reduced to charred skeletons, nothing moved down there except the zombies.

  Now, a few miles later, we had traveled past where the fire had consumed everything. But the view of the city from the higher ground of the highway had still been desolate.

  The roads became harder to navigate as we skirted around the edges of town. There were zombies, and a lot of them. No one was going to lose sleep over running the creatures over, but the van wasn't exactly an all terrain vehicle. If too many of them piled up under the wheels, it may be enough to get us stuck.

  There were also more cars. Cars everywhere. They were still parked along the curb, standing abandoned in the middle of the streets, and I even saw one buried up to the hind wheels in the side of the house that it had drove into. Add to the chaos the general trash that was laying around, and more than one partially eaten body, and this city could hardly be mistaken for any kind of haven.

  I was watching out the window with growing dread, the atmosphere in the van was becoming more bleak by the minute, if that was even possible. It was obvious to anyone who cared to look that the city belonged to the dead. In fact, a growing horde of them was falling in line behind our vehicle. With the van dangerously low on fuel, the situation was a disaster in the making.

  When my frayed nerves couldn't take any more, I opened my mouth to give my opinion that we should get back on the highway and get as far away as we could before we ran out of gas. But a sign caught my eye. A sign that, as long as some of the supplies inside remained, could mean the difference between life and death.

  "There!" I pointed. "There's an Urgent Care building ahead. We need to go there."

  When no one agreed with me right away, I knew that I was going to have to convince them. Twisting sideways in my seat, I did my best.

  "Look, I know we already agreed hospitals are too dangerous. They would have been full of people who died of the virus. But an Urgent Care building would have sent all of their worst cases to the ER. There may not be any zombies at all inside. And we need medical supplies." I glanced back to where Maya was watching me over the seat in front of her. "Bill needs fluids to start building his blood back up. If he doesn't wake up soon, an IV may be the only thing that can save him."

  Then I turned to Devon, "And you, I haven't missed that you're getting worse again. We need more antibiotics."

  Silence fell as they thought over my words. I looked over to Shawn. He disagreed with me, I could see it in the way he frowned slightly, and kept his eyes fixed ahead. S
lumping back into my seat, I kept my mouth shut. This had to be a decision made by the group, not just me. If they didn't want to try for the medical supplies, then that was that.

  "Please." Maya's voice cracked from dehydration and her grief. "Please, if there is any chance, we have to try."

  FORTY-SIX-DAY 22

  Our destination came into view. The front of the one story building was made almost entirely of glass. Posters depicting white coated doctors smiling brightly at their patients covered a lot of the windows, but not all. As far as I could tell from my admittedly compromised vantage point in the van, the seating area appeared to be empty.

  A thud to the back of the van was followed by the sound of someone scrabbling at the window. One of the more mobile zombies had caught up to us while we idled out front of the building, and that brought up a good point. I stared at the glass windows. The last time we had relied on a glass wall to keep zombies out, we had lost someone, and Shawn and I had barely managed to escape.

  There was a growing sea of zombies trailing along behind us. Even if we did manage to move the entire group safely from the van into that building, it wouldn't take long for the zombies to break through.

  My heart sunk. "We can't stop there."

  "We're going to have to stop somewhere really soon," Shawn reminded me needlessly.

  Everyone watched as the building slip past with somber expressions. Now that our need for medical care had been dragged out into the open, it was harder to pretend that everything was going to be ok.

  "Maybe we can find somewhere nearby to stop, and we can sneak back for the things we need once the zombies have cleared," Fallon sounded hopeful.

  Pressing my forehead to the side window, I sighed. If only it was that simple. There were a lot of zombies here. The odds of enough of them going somewhere else to make that play anything besides suicide, were not high.

  "The warning light has been on for a while. We need to make a decision."