by DeWitt, Dan
Hey, Jackie loved that movie.
I popped it in, grabbed the remote, and hit the treadmill. I'm not a great runner by any means. Give me a basketball and I can play all day, but there's a mental aspect to distance running that I've never been wired for. However, my new circumstances dictated that I should probably just get over that shit and get back into real shape.
I started off at a ten-minute mile pace and went. I increased the pace several times until I had settled into a what I thought was nice, zombie-outrunning speed. And no, I'm not joking.
On the screen, Adam Sandler was serenading Drew Barrymore with his uneven, The Cure-inspired song, and I wanted to laugh. I always did at that part; Jackie did, too. But it wouldn't come.
I cooled down for a few minutes and stepped off. I was still too keyed up to get back to bed, but it's not like I had to be anywhere that morning. I moved to the curl bench and threw some weight on it. It had been a long time since I'd used free weights, and I didn't know how much I could handle without hurting something, so I started light. I banged out a set as a warm-up. I slid the weights off of the bar and grabbed a heavier one. I started to slide it off the rack, but I lost my concentration and the weight slid back on the peg and one of my fingers got painfully sandwiched between two weights.
As injuries go, it was nothing.
Still, I walked away from the rack and into the locker room. I intended to take a few breaths, splash some water on my face, and get back to it. Unfortunately, I still had the curl bar in my hands.
I screamed and swung it into the nearest locker. The door caved in. I swung again and again and again, bellowing with each blow, completely out of control.
In case you haven't guessed, it had nothing to do with hurting my finger.
I don't know how long I stayed at it. All I know is that, by the time I was done, I was panting, my hands throbbed like you wouldn't believe, and six lockers were, to put it mildly, unusable.
“Now there's a man who needs a drink.”
I was afraid to turn around and face Mutt. I had no idea how long he'd been standing there, but I was embarrassed enough when I'd thought I was alone. Now that one of my teammates had seen at least some of it, I was mortified.
I dropped the bar, but didn't look at him. “How'd you find me?”
“Wasn't hard. You were only slightly louder than a piledriver.”
For the first time, I met his gaze. “Sorry.” It was all I could think of to say.
“For what? Being human and throwing a shitfit? I trust you down there; that's all that matters. I haven't lost it like that yet, but it sure looks like it did the trick.” He tossed me a towel. “C'mon, the rest of the guys are up, too. Let's drink some cheap booze and have a smoke.”
My tantrum had been exactly what I'd needed at the time. And smoking and drinking with my team was exactly what I needed after my hissy fit was over. “Shit, yes. Just give me a second to freshen up.”
I ran the cold water and washed myself down as much as I could. When I walked out of the locker room, he had the remote in hand and had rewound to the part where Sandler was singing. “This part always makes me laugh.”
It's been a while since the last entry. I haven't written anything because, frankly, there's nothing new to tell. In the beginning, we'd find survivors here and there. That made every trip worth it, even though I didn't get any closer to finding my family.
It's getting harder to convince myself that Jackie didn't die in the fire at the salon, or that Ethan isn't dead or worse.
Now, it feels like I'm on auto-pilot. We go in, kill zombies if we have to, come up empty, and let Scythe go in and wipe everything off the face of the earth. I've lost a few guys along the way, but the core team remains.
As I said, nothing new.
Well, there may be another recruit. Mutt brought him to my attention. I was against bringing in anyone else, because they had all been forced on me by Trager. But Mutt asked me to humor him. We put the kid, Tim, through a training exercise that we'd cooked up especially for him. He screwed up at the end, but there's something about him … I don't know.
I'm going to find out. It's time to have a talk, just me and him. I need to know what he's about.
I hope I'm doing this for the right reasons, and not because of my guilt over not being able to protect Ethan. But the fact that I just wrote the previous sentence probably means that I already know the answer.
We'll see.
More if I have time.
Honestly, it feels like everything's coming to a head. A resolution.
One way or another.
Until next time, be safe.
Don't let them bite you.
Afterword
A funny thing can happen after you publish a novel: sometimes, people read it.
Even funnier, sometimes they enjoy it, and want more.
You may or may not have already read my zombie thriller Orpheus. If you have, thanks. Anyway, some readers had questions. Where did the virus come from? What happened in the first hours and days of the outbreak on the island? How did Cameron Holt and his Scalpel team come together in the first place?
They seemed like reasonable questions and, to be completely honest, I wasn't entirely sure of the answers. So I started writing, and who better to tell that particular story than Orpheus himself?
Orpheus Born isn't meant to be one of those sequel/prequel things. It's just an expansion of the first novel that fills in some hopefully interesting blanks. Even though I wrote it second, I think I managed to avoid putting anything in it that could spoil the actual novel, so the two can be read in either order.
That's it. Short novella, short afterword. See you in Orpheus II.
Dan DeWitt
July 2012