Day One (Book 3): Alone

by Michael McDonald

  The sound of a board creaking from behind thrust me in its direction to see Rachel standing at the kitchen threshold. “Whatever was out there is gone now,” she said in a light voice.

  “Same at my door,” I responded, still looking at her as the urgency of fear retracted from where it came from gracefully.

  “They had to have known we were in here, so why did they give up?” She asked.

  “I really don’t think they did,” my words sprouted fourth.

  Confusion came to life upon her face. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m pretty sure they were trying our defenses and looking for any signs of weakness. We may have won this round, but they’ll be back to try somewhere else,” I confided in her. The look now on her face told me she didn’t approve of what I had to say, although I could sense somehow that she knew I was right.

  “How can those things be so damn smart?” She asked. “They’re dead and as far as I have seen, they’ve never shown any signs of intelligence or even partial wits.”

  The one that spoke to me in my Ex’s house came to me and I thought about telling Rachel, although deep down I still thought she would think I was crazy. It’s bad enough she knew I had been bitten over a week ago, so the last thing I needed her thinking was not only could I turn into one of those things still, but acting crazy and babbling incoherently might force her to believe I really was changing already.

  “Hey,” I said to her. “It had to be the runners. They are the only ones smart enough to pull off something like this, because if it had been other survivors, they would have let us know they were alive. They had to have heard us in here screaming at one another at some point.” I did my best to put her at ease. I don’t think it worked, but still I had given it a shot.

  “We really need to get out of here,” she added.

  That would be about as easy as opening the door and letting them in, then dropping our guns and hoping for the best.

  “We really, really need to get out of here, now!” She strongly interjected.

  “You want to leave the safety of this place to travel out there, into the unknown with god only knows what’s waiting for us?” I asked her.

  “This place isn’t safe anymore,” she countered my statement.

  “It’s safer in here than it is out there, Rachel!” I fired back. “Not only that, but where shall we go once we get out there? To another house where they can follow us, or perhaps we just stay on foot until they run us down, surround us…” my words faded as I didn’t have the strength to keep going back and forth. I was tired of arguing and fighting with people about obvious shit.

  Rachel noticed my fading words and looked harder at me. In any other circumstances she would have chalked that up to a victory in her book, yet the harder she looked the less the victory seemed to manifest before her. “What’s wrong?” She asked me suddenly.

  I looked at her, although my eyes would not make contact with hers.

  “Seriously, what is it?”

  “It’s pretty obvious,” I said as Morris walked into our conversation, stopping at the door beside Rachel.

  “What is?” She asked, still oblivious to the cold hard truth.

  Morris took the words before I could speak them. “We aren’t getting out of this one.”

  Rachel threw her eyes to him and saw that plain truth radiating like the warm sun on a hot summer day. There was no hiding from it anymore. No denying the outcome. She quickly shook her head at his words and pushed hard against the door facing behind her, as if it would keep her from falling into the black abyss that had opened below her feet. She would fight it as long as she could, never giving in until there was no more reasons to even try. “No! Both of you are wrong on this. We have a chance and you two just want to give up?”

  “And what chance would that be, Rachel?” Morris asked her.

  “I don’t know, but we cannot just give up!” She babbled.

  Morris pointed toward the front door. “Those things, the ones that can run, are outside right now trying to find a way in here. And let’s not forget about the other things that are growing in size as well. With each passing moment we are more and more outnumbered,” he explained harshly to her. “So unless you have some magical fucking tunnel built we don’t know about, then yeah, we’re done for!”

  Rachel heard his words, but for the life of her she couldn’t register them in her brain that the end was coming. Like Brandon, she was not a badass, but the thought of just giving up and waiting to die made its anticipation even worse. “No!” She said aloud. “You two can give up all you want, but I’m not about to just lie down and die… I’ll fight to my last breath.”

  Morris rolled his eyes at her words and shook his head. “You won’t last five seconds against those things, especially the runners,” he offered her in a snide spill.

  I didn’t much care for what he had to say or how he wanted it said. It was his personal opinion and nothing more. That was the right he had as an individual, but that also gave Rachel and myself the ability to believe what we wanted and not follow him blindly like sheep. He was a spineless coward, I could see that more clearly now and I had come to damn far too just sit down and die. My children needed me and I’d fight the very pits of hell for them and emerge victorious at the end.

  “I’m with you,” I said suddenly and reached for her. She looked at me, seeing the sincerity in my eyes and quickly took my hand. I could see the excitement cascade into her eyes.

  “You two are the stupidest people I have ever met!” Morris announced, as he shook his head. “You don’t stand a chance against them. I can see it, so why can’t you two idiots?”

  I turned to look at Morris and he looked away from me, although I spoke my mind to him anyway. “The only stupid person in this kitchen is the one unwilling to at least try and survive.”

  “Try what?” he shot to me. “Like I said already, unless there is a magical tunnel somewhere, we aren’t getting out of here and to think we even have the slightest chance is just wishful thinking at best. When they break in we’ll kill as many of them as we can, then save a few bullets to use on ourselves when the shit falls apart, which it will. Mark my word on that.”

  “Unlikely,” I said to him.

  “And how do you figure that’s unlikely?” Morris asked.

  “Because we’ll take the fight to them,” I told him. “That way if the shit hits the fan, as you say it will, at least we’ll have the ability to fade away in the utter chaos,” I explained. “Or at least die on our feet with some sort of dignity.”

  He looked at me as though I had just punched a defenseless old lady in the head and found it hilarious. “You mean try to run away with all of those things chasing you? Things that don’t tire like we do and can now run?” Morris shook his head and wiped the front of his face. “You two are nuts, ya hear me? You’re fucking insane to even think that kind of stupid shit will work.”

  “It beats sitting around here waiting to die,” Rachel threw her two cents in.

  “We’ll last a whole hell of a lot longer in here than we ever would out there!” Morris said. “But if you dumbasses want to go, then by all means, have at it.” He motioned for the front door and mockingly smiled at us.

  Rachel looked toward me to see me looking at Morris. There was a slight grin on my lips that intrigued her.

  “I don’t think you understand what I’m saying, Morris.” I said, instantly calling his full attention. “I told you from the start that I saved you only to ensure you are punished for what you’ve done, which means you’re coming along with us, and that’s not negotiable.”

  His eyes sunk into their sockets, realizing that he wouldn’t get to sneak away after all as Rachel and I were attacked. He would be in the middle of it all with us, unarmed and totally dependent upon us to keep him alive. “You’re mistaken,” he said.

  “No, I am very much in charge and what I say goes!” My words rumbled like the thunder we had been hearing.

&nbs
p; He looked at me with defiant eyes. “You can’t make me do shit, do you hear me. Not shit!”

  “How’s that hand of yours?” I asked him. “I told you that if you became a problem I’d shoot you in your leg and let those things have you. It isn’t really the justice I was wanting, but it’ll do. So you can willingly tag along with us or stay behind as bait while we slip away… your choice.”

  He pulled his wounded hand closer to his chest. “I’m not going out there unarmed.”

  “Well, I can assure you, you aren’t getting a gun this time, slick,” I said and moved closer to Rachel where I gave her pistol back.

  He glared at me in the kitchen with a look that could have killed me a hundred times over and it took everything I had to keep from laughing in his face. The look he wore was priceless and had it not been for me wanting to save what little battery I had on my cell phone, I would have whipped it out and taken a few pictures of him just to look at them later and relive the joy I felt at this very moment.

  Chapter Ten

  There was nothing he could do to stop what was coming. No amount of words, begging, pleading or anything to that tune would win him what he so desperately desired. Not that a narcissistic type like him would even perform such actions in front of us, as his pride would not allow it. His eyes, however, told a far different story and with each new paragraph, I began to learn more than I’d ever wanted to about the waste of space. I just wanted to shoot him in both legs, drag him across the kitchen floor and offer him up to whatever had been at the back door.

  For the sake of keeping myself in god graces with Rachel, as I would most certainly need her soon, I sided against my thoughts and left Morris where he stood.

  “How is getting all of us killed going to solve anything?” Morris asked, still trying to weasel his way out of leaving the relative safety of the house.

  I shoved the barrel of my short rifle toward him. “If you say another word you’ll have two injured hands. Do you understand?”

  Morris simply nodded and grabbed a dishtowel to wrap around his still bleeding hand, mumbling something under his breath that I didn’t give a single shit about. He had no friends to back him up, he was unarmed and there was nowhere for him to run off too. He knew what waited on the other side of that door like Rachel and I did, so there was no need to remind him. Rachel and I retired to the living room to speak in private and work out the details of our swiftly approaching bad decision.

  Rachel clung to the words I had spoken and I could see her chewing them over. There was no way for me to know if she thought the idea was absurd, maybe a good idea, or simply the stupidest thing she’d ever heard before. All I could do was stand there listening to the falling rain waiting for her to respond.

  “Is that the best you got?” She asked, looking at me.

  I felt the irritation creeping across my skin like an abrasion on bare asphalt and was about to give her a piece of my mind. She stopped me before I could fully react. “I didn’t say it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard – it could rank somewhere near the middle though – but I have nothing really to offer, so who am I to judge,” she said.

  I moved to the front window and lightly pulled the curtain a few inches to the side, just enough to see out, yet not give away my position to anyone that could be on the street out front. The rain wasn’t falling in sheets anymore and it allowed me to see further than earlier, however, the street was filled with almost two dozen of the undead now and there was absolutely no way to know for sure if any of the runners were hiding amongst those twenty plus obstacles. The only real way to know was to venture out there and see.

  “Your gun is silenced, where mine isn’t,” Rachel started. “So when we head out there and run into trouble, which we will, I’ll just be ringing the dinner bell.”

  My eyes swiveled to where she stood and locked with hers. “Not if you two stay behind me, you won’t. The only time you should use your weapon is if the shit hits the fan and we run into a severe snag,” I told her. “Besides, they already know we are in here, so the dinner bell has already been rung.”

  “Walking out that door is going to be a ‘severe snag’ in and of its own,” she countered.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I replied. “A snag would be me having trouble reloading, dropping a mag, or falling. At that point we’ll be more than noticed by a great many of them, so the noise of you pistol really won’t matter.”

  Rachel nodded her head to my statement. “Okay, I can live with that…”

  “But?” I interrupted her.

  “There are three of us and two guns. I know that one gun alone can defend several people at one time, but out there when things get bad, then what?” she asked. “We can come up with all kinds of scenarios in here in relative safety. Out there though, all it take s is one person falling apart or doing something stupid to get the rest of us killed. And then there’s the question of where we are going from here?”

  I listened intently to each of her words, trying to understand perfectly where she was coming from and where she was going with them. I needed to be positive that I was leaving with two other people that would do whatever it took to ensure that we all made it to our destination alive. If there was even the slightest hint of doubt in her or Morris’ voices, then I’d be forced to go alone and come back for them after I had found a suitable place to hide in for the remainder of the day, maybe even all night. It wasn’t a move I wanted to make by myself, yet the thought of running aimlessly around with one person that wasn’t sure we should be moving at all and a second person, that if given the chance to kill me, would do it in a heartbeat, was not my idea of a good time.

  The more I thought about it, the more I saw it from a different perspective. A perspective that I was not entirely fond of, seeing it through a different set of eyes. I began to wonder if maybe I had overloaded my ass somehow and would soon find out how bad. “I’ll go alone,” I said. “I’ll find us a place further away, then come back and get you two.”

  Rachel was mortified with my choice and quickly shook her head. “No! That’s not a smart move at all! We all go together or none of us goes at all,” she said.

  I stopped her. “Rachel, we don’t have a choice. Those things know where we are and it’s only a matter of time before they get in here and flush us out to a street, which is full of the undead now. This place isn’t safe anymore and I cannot for the life of me understand why you now see things differently,” my words spewed out upon her. “Minutes ago you were ready to take the whole world on, but now you’re acting as though this was my idea and you hate it as much as he does.” I pointed to Morris. “I’m going, because I’ve got two kids out there that need me and I can’t do a damn thing for them stuck here in this place.”

  “And getting yourself killed alone isn’t going to help them either,” Rachel spurted. “And I never said I wasn’t going out there… that was your call, remember.”

  “No, I didn’t… yes, I did say that. Whatever!” The rage was coming on once more. I snapped. “They would expect me to fight to stay alive just as hard as I would fight to keep them alive, and that’s exactly what I plan on doing. I said I’d go to keep from fighting!”

  There was a brief moment of silence between us. It was long enough for me to gather my thoughts and piece my words together better. I didn’t want to keep this arguing up any longer, as it was getting all of us nowhere fast. We needed solutions, not more problems to deal with. The world we all lived in and knew had ended and that formed the largest problem any of us should have to face, but we were putting things above that and missing the whole point of trying to survive. What good is life if you have nothing to live for, nothing to hope and dream of, nothing to focus on in those fleeting moments of defeat that drive us continually forward?

  “Look,” I said to Rachel. “I don’t want to argue or fight about any of this anymore. If you want to come with me, then we’ll all go together. If you don’t, then say so and we’ll figure something el
se out.” I took a few deep breaths. “My kids are out there somewhere and it’s my job to protect them… something I haven’t done very well so far, but that doesn’t mean I can change and better myself.”

  She took a step backward. “There’s nothing I can say to that. You have your mind made up and it involves your children, which comes first over anything else. Period!” She paused a moment to think of her next series of words or to simply think something else up. “I know you might not feel this way right now, but you are a good dad. I don’t know anyone else that would do the things you’ve done for their kids. Everyone I know would be dead by now or worse.”

  Morris patted her on the shoulder, seeing that she had enough power over me to decide what happened and when. “You made the right choice, Rachel,” he stated and smiled. She yanked her shoulder away from him, although kept her eyes upon me.

  “I’ll come back… I promise you that,” I told her, unaware if she believed me.

  “If you’re going to leave, then let us have that rifle and you take her pistol. That way if those things get in here before you get back we’ll at least have a chance to defend ourselves,” Morris said and Rachel and I turned to see him a few feet away.

  “I told you to watch that door,” I said angrily.

  He ignored my words, offering his own instead. “If you’re leaving, then you aren’t leaving us here unarmed or with some damn pistol! If that’s the case then we might as well throw harsh language at those damn things, because that pistol isn’t going to get shit accomplished!”