by Lora Powell
Her voice was quiet when she answered, "Not good."
"Yeah. Me either."
No one really knew what to say after that, so we ate a subdued lunch with the people from this group, and waited to find out what was going to happen next.
I had just finished shoving the last of the stew down in a very unlady-like fashion, when Maggie walked out of the shadows.
She walked right up to our little group, "Alex just informed me that your friend has made his decision. He's decided that he doesn't want to amputate."
FIFTY-FOUR-DAY 25
It wasn't until after I learned that Devon was choosing to not have his leg amputated, that I realized that I did have an opinion on the subject. A rather strong one, in fact. Hearing that he was essentially giving up, I suddenly knew what choice I would have made in his situation. This was one thing that we did not see eye to eye on.
No matter what, I knew that I could never stop trying. Not just for myself, but for the rest of our little group. We had become something of a family as the weeks together went by. I guess, you couldn't really expect anything less when your life literally depended on those around you. We were all going to feel the loss keenly, but no one more than Fallon.
The two of them had grown close. It seemed to be more of a best friends or brother and sister kind of thing, and that maybe made what was inevitably going to happen all the worse. Fallon was only a couple of years younger than me, Devon only a couple of years younger than her, but they both seemed so young to me. The kind of young that still needed family around, and I knew that Fallon was going to be wrecked by his loss.
The whole situation made me mad. I was mad that the world had gone to hell, making it a possibility to die from a cut. I was mad that Devon was giving up without a fight. And I was mad that I hadn't been able to fix the situation before it got to this point.
We had spent most of the previous day hanging out with the group. The mood had been subdued at best. Conversation had been stilted. Alex continued to do his best to treat Devon, but the sharpie lines steadily advanced higher up his leg no matter what the nurse tried.
I had come to the conclusion, in the night, that I did not want to spend another day sitting around and watching a friend slowly die. That was how Shawn and I ended up joining the group of scavengers who were spending the day searching for anything useful that might still be in the nearby buildings.
"We've already been through most of this area. There's a small grocery store that we skipped at first, because we could see a lot of zombies inside, but the last time anyone went by it they reported that the zombies seem to have gotten out. Today's goal is to check it out. If the zombies were there from the beginning, there is probably still a lot of usable food inside." It turned out that Mark, the gym guy, was in charge of scavenging.
"Alright," I checked that my knife was strapped to my belt and gripped the machete that had become my favorite weapon. Someone had offered me a gun, but I hadn't the first clue what to do with one of those. I'd be just as likely to shoot a friend as a zombie. Better to stick with what I knew, for now.
"You know how to handle yourself with that?" The throaty voice could only belong to one person.
"Yeah," I turned to face Charlie, who was eyeing the machete. "I'm better off with this than anything else."
"Ok. Just checking. We had a guy cut his own thumb off with one of those, once." She grinned at me.
It felt good to think about something other than Devon and his leg, just for a while. I smiled back at her.
"You have everything you need?" Shawn walked up to the group gathering by the front door. He'd picked up a knife from somewhere, and was carrying the tire iron. It had turned out to be an effective zombie killing weapon.
"Yeah, I'm ready to go. I just need to get out of here for a day," I felt like I needed to explain myself.
"It's alright, Bri. Sitting around doing nothing won't change anything. If we can go out and help bring back food, we will be doing something good for the whole group."
I shouldn't have been surprised that he understood so well. That was just one of the many reasons that I had become so attached to him, despite the tough guy exterior, Shawn was actually very observant of those around him.
"Luna is having a good time with that dog of yours," Charlie interrupted my thoughts.
I had decided not to take Rex out with us. There was too many things that could go wrong, if I could keep him safe, that's what I wanted to do. The problem had been figuring out who to leave him with. The rest of my friends were too busy, and then inspiration struck. Leaving him with the little girl would keep both of them occupied for a while. "Good. Maybe they will tire each other out."
"Right!" She chuckled. "That child needs another kid to play with."
"Let's go!" Mark called the group and ended the conversation.
The same two trucks that we'd used before stood waiting outside. Charlie, Shawn, and I climbed into the back of one, a woman I hadn't met yet got behind the wheel. Mark, and two guys I'd seen around took the other. Before long, we were winding our way down roads clogged with abandoned vehicles. Zombies, mostly of the slower variety, bounced off of the sides of the trucks. Most of them stood no chance of getting inside at us. The few who came to close, were dealt with easily.
The edges of the town looked like every other place we'd seen since coming back out of the mountains. Fires had burned a few buildings. Cars, trash, and zombies littered the streets. A tabby cat darted in front of our truck and into some bushes along the side of a house. It was going to be another hot day, and the smell in the air was decay with hints of the fires that had burned.
Despite it all, the wind felt good on my skin as we drove along. The strip mall was too dark and enclosed, and with emotions running so high, I had been feeling trapped.
Within a couple of minutes, the trucks pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store. The front wall was made mostly of glass, and we could easily see a lot of the interior of the small building. There was a zombie roaming up and down the aisles, but one glass pane had broken out, and the rest of them must have gotten out that way.
Driving slowly, the trucks came to a stop not far from the front doors. We had attracted a small group of zombies. One of them was a runner. It shrieked as it sprinted towards us, making me cringe. That call would attract more unwelcome attention.
Beside me, Charlie nonchalantly took aim and dropped the running zombie. Remind me not to get on that particular woman's bad side.
"Nice shot," Mark jumped out of the other truck.
Shrugging, she jumped down. Charlie didn't seem to think too much, one way or the other, of her own ability with that gun. I had been drawn to the older woman from the first time I met her. After that little display, I was starting to wonder if maybe she wouldn't mind teaching me.
"Ok, guys. Here's the plan. Sara and Ed will stay out here and keep watch. If anything to bad comes our way, they will honk the horn once. The rest of us are going in. We will sweep the store first. After it's clear, we'll load anything that's left up and get out of here. I don't want to stay any longer than absolutely necessary. You know how it is, the longer we stay out here, the more zombies will find us."
FIFTY-FIVE-DAY 25
The inside of the grocery store smelled like long rotten produce and death. We had walked across a dried pool of blood with bits of torn jeans and bone right inside the front door. Overturned shopping carts had spilled their contents across the floor. It looked like, when this building was overrun, there had still been more than a few shoppers inside.
I flashed back to the day before the start of all of this, when I had stood in a checkout line in another grocery store, and contemplated getting that flu shot. If not for the crowds of people wearing on my nerves, I would likely be one of the zombies right now. Eternally trapped inside our apartment with Evie and maybe Austin.
I wondered if the little girl with the snotty nose was alive out there, somewhere. I hoped she was, but the
odds weren't good. Other than those couple of kids living in the murderous Mack's compound, Luna was the only child anyone seemed to have seen in weeks.
That was the thing about the end of the world. Only the strong, and maybe a bit evil, survived. Humanity's most important resource stood little chance.
From deeper in the store, something kicked a can, sending it rolling out into the main aisle with a clatter.
"Stay alert," Mark walked at the front of our group. Charlie was next, with Shawn and I fanning out behind them. The guy who's name I hadn't caught yet was last, keeping an eye on our backs.
A half a dozen aisles away, a badly decomposed zombie shuffled into view. The long, stringy hair was the only feature left that hinted what gender it had been. The creature shuffled toward the can that had rolled, oblivious to us watching it just feet away. While the fresher zombies were frighteningly fast and smarter than was comforting, these older ones were both slow and stupid. Thankfully, there seemed to be more of the latter than the former anymore.
Sticking together, our group moved towards the zombie. Mark pulled a knife just as the creature finally noticed us. Swinging stiffly around, it gurgled a low growl and lurched our way. Using one hand, Mark was able to easily hold it back while he stabbed it in the head. The zombie slumped to the floor with a disgustingly wet sound.
Grimacing, Mark tried to shake the zombie body fluids off of his hand. He ended up wiping it the best he could on the equally dirty floor, which didn't help much.
The store turned out to be just as small on the inside as the outside had made it look. Working together, we swept up and down all of the aisles, checked in the bathrooms, and wandered the warehouse. In the back, dragging itself along, we found the only other zombie still in the store. Whoever the guy had been, both of his legs were gone below the knees, nothing but ragged looking stumps left. Shawn's tire iron made short work of the pitiful thing.
The warehouse turned out to be the perfect place to start taking food. Most everything back there was already in boxes. It was an easy task to read the labels and choose nonperishable's. With so many hands, the trucks filled up quickly. There were still entire skids of unopened boxes, plus the shelves out in the store hadn't been completely empty. It was going to take more than one trip to empty the store of supplies.
We were walking back through the store, arms loaded down with boxes of canned peaches and pasta, when a short blast from one of the trucks outside sounded.
Picking up speed, we jogged back out into the parking lot, fully expecting to see distant zombies. A few had been showing up in low numbers while we went back and forth carrying boxes, and the two who had been left outside had taken care of them. Maybe a couple of dozen bodies were now slumped around on the pavement. But we had all been operating with the understanding that, sooner or later, to many to safely face would show up, and we would need to make a hasty retreat.
So, when we emerged from the gloomy store and stepped into the sun, I was surprised when I didn't see any immediately threatening zombies. Instead, a third pick-up had appeared, and was parked maybe a dozen yards from our own vehicles. Two men sat tensely inside the cab. Two more, heavily armed, stood in the bed and eyed our group with expressions that set off all sorts of warning bells.
Charlie and Mark both dropped their boxes right on the spot and took defensive looking holds on their guns. Standing behind either of our trucks, both Sara and Ed also had their guns in hand. The situation was turning into a tense looking standoff and no one had even said a word yet. I shuffled sideways a step, putting a vehicle in between myself and the strangers, and wished that I had already learned how to handle a gun.
Finally, Mark spoke up, "Can I help you gentlemen with something?"
It took several seconds, but the one driving their truck seemed to make a decision. Slowly, he opened his door and got out. "Looks like we weren't the only ones to want to check inside this here store."
Something about the man set me on edge. It was more than his aggressive body language and the guns pointed our way. But I couldn't put my finger on it.
"Yeah, there's still a good amount of food inside. Plenty to share. We were just getting ready to move out," Mark made a gesture that I interpreted to mean we should get the last of the boxes in the truck. He seemed to be going for cautiously friendly, but wanted to be ready to get out of there in a hurry.
"That so?" The man looked to his own group meaningfully, before turning to look back at us. His focus shifted away from Mark as he evaluated the rest of our group.
We outnumbered them, something that I was fervently thankful for. These strangers were barely concealing their hostility. As I slid my box into the back of our truck, I was hoping that fact would keep them from trying anything.
Watching him suspiciously, I saw as he dismissed one after another of our group as important. He nearly scoffed at both Sara and Charlie, eyes flicking to their weapons like he found it humorous that they were aiming guns his way. He looked over Ed a second longer, before dismissing me with barely a second glance.
But then his eyes lit on Shawn. It was the moment I saw recognition in their flat depths, that I knew why I was so aware of this person as dangerous.
It was the man that Rex had bitten as we escaped from Mack's stronghold.
I must have made some sort of sound of distress because I felt Shawn step closer behind me. The action brought the guy's focus back to me, and I saw that this time he recognized me too. A flush started to work it's way up his dirty neck.
A calculating look crossed his face. "Well, if there's that much still inside, I don't see any harm in sharing. If you all are finished, we'll head on in and take what we need."
I could see that Mark knew that something had just happened, but he didn't know what. One minute, the strangers had been clearly deciding if they should take our food, the next they were playing nice. Either way, he wasn't about to waste the chance to leave. "Sounds like a plan. You fellas have a safe trip home." He looked around at us, "Get in the trucks."
My arms were shaking so hard that I almost fell climbing into the back of the truck. Shawn caught me and practically lifted me bodily into the back. I could tell he was unclear about what had suddenly set me off, but we trusted each other enough to know that if one of us was upset, there was a reason.
Swinging around, I kept the others in view, not about to turn my back on them. Charlie and Shawn were both crowded into the back of the loaded truck bed next to me. Slamming doors and starting engines were cold comfort, because the man was watching us intently.
His earlier dismissal of me was long gone. Now, he watched as we started to pull away with glinting eyes. Before we got too far away for me to have missed the expression, he smiled a feral looking smile directly at me.
FIFTY-SIX-DAY 28
My eyes burned with exhaustion. I'd barely managed to sleep for three days. Between worrying about the group of insane people finding us, and watching a friend slowly succumb to his illness, I was mentally tapped out.
"Hey."
"Hey," I glanced over my shoulder to where Shawn was walking towards me through the darkened building. He walked up to stand right behind me and looked me over. When a hint of a frown twitched at the corners of his mouth, I knew he wasn't thrilled with what he saw.
"You haven't gotten any sleep yet, have you?"
"Not really," I turned back to look out the sliver of cleared glass. I'd spent way too much time over the past few days, peeling back tiny sections of the newspaper that had been used to cover the windows so I could see outside. "With everything that's going on, I just can't."
"Yeah," he moved closer and wrapped both arms around me. I settled back into the embrace, but kept watching outside. "But it's not going to do anybody any good if you run yourself into the ground."
I sighed. "Something bad is coming. I feel it."
He didn't respond, so I kept going.
"Those people are dangerous. I don't know how we managed to run into them t
wice, but we barely got away the first time. What if they're still out there?"
"What if they're not?" I stiffened at the question so he hurried to go on. "It's been days. If they were going to try anything, I'd think they would have by now. Maybe all they really wanted was the food in that store. Besides, Maggie took your warning seriously. The extra lookout is still up on the roof."
I sighed again and covered the window back up. The only thing moving out there was a trio of slow zombies. If they came too close, someone on watch would take care of them. I turned in Shawn's arms and wrapped my own around his waist.
He propped his chin on top of my head. "Are you sure that all of this isn't because of what's happening to Devon?"
I winced at the reminder.
We had all spent a lot of time with Devon these last few days. Someone was always with him. But he had fallen unconscious in the middle of the last night. I hadn't been able to bring myself to stay with him after that. Alex had quietly told us that he probably wouldn't wake up again.
"I'm on my way to go sit with everyone. You should come too. It would mean a lot to them."
He was right. I knew it, I had simply been stalling as I stared out the window. Devon was going to die, probably today, and we should all be there to support each other.
I didn't know if I could watch someone die, though. We had all done so many things that none of us would have thought ourselves capable of, lost so much of ourselves somewhere along the way, but the one thing I hadn't had to endure yet was actually watching a friend die. At least, not since I knew what was going on.
Deep down, I feared that that would be the one thing that would change me into someone I no longer recognized.
We had lost friends along the way, and I of course knew that it would happen again and again, but actually seeing it, comprehending what was really at stake, would somehow make it too real. Death was inevitable in our new world, but I knew that the death of one person in particular had the potential to break me. And that was what ultimately scared the heck out of me.