The Living Saga (Book 1): Surviving

by McFall, Jaron

  “As long as it hasn’t been looted,” Danny added.

  Ross turned the car around in a driveway and started to drive toward the main strip in the small city. After a fifteen minute drive, they reached the drug store. The rain had gone from a slight drizzle to a downpour. From the outside, the building looked completely undisturbed with no cars in the parking lot. The entire main body of Rogersville looked abandoned to the occupants of the car.

  They sat in the car, looking around the entire area before deciding on a plan. Ross sat in the car while Sue and Danny went to scope out the building. He watched the two go inside the dark building while he sat in the running car looking around the area for any infected humans to come. In reality, he could hardly see out of his windows because of the fog beginning to gather on the cold windows. He repetitively opened his cellular phone and stared at the blank screen.

  His phone had finally died the day before and had been out of service for days but he couldn’t help looking at the screen constantly. He had always been the kind of person who fiddled with his phone to purposely distract himself and now was no different. He was anxious and he couldn’t help but to perform his normal habits. Ross was, if nothing else, a creature of his own habits.

  Ross sat in the car and cycled through his habits in his head. He had tried and succeeded to quit a singular habit many times, only for it to be replaced by another. Ross laughed when he thought about how nervous he was at work and how bad his habits were then, but now in the midst of a horrible epidemic, this was the first time he had done any of his bad habits.

  “I blame you two,” he said as he looked back up to the front door of the Walgreen’s Drug Store. Then, he heard Sue scream.

  Sue typed the code into the alarm system as soon as she had opened the front door. She was fairly sure that the alarm company wasn’t going to report to the police since the local firm was in Knoxville and probably had a lot more things to do. But this would save her ears from the alarm that would sound. She pointed with her golf club toward a door at the back of the store, “That’s the office,” she said. Then she pointed in another direction, “but let's make our way around the store checking everything out first. I don’t want to be locked up in here with a crazy person.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Danny said as he followed Sue in the direction away from the office door. They both kept a tight grip on their golf clubs as they made their path through the store checking all the areas for any signs of people, infected or not.

  Sue could feel her heart beating so loudly in her chest that she wondered if Danny could hear it too. She kept glancing over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn’t alone. Danny kept glancing over his to make sure that they were. As they went around a corner a loud crash came from directly behind Sue. She screamed as she turned and swung her golf club. She felt the thud reverberate in her arms right as she realized she had caught Danny hard in the ribs.

  Danny fell to the ground clutching his abdomen and curled into a ball. Sue looked frantically around expecting to find an infected human somewhere but instead saw a pile of cans that Danny had knocked over. She felt the color drain from her face as the adrenaline wore off and a queasiness set in her stomach. Sue knelt down and helped Danny to his knees.

  “Oh my God! Danny, I’m so sorry,” Sue began.

  Danny cut her off by saying, “I think I’m okay. Just help me up.” Sue lifted Danny to his feet and he winced. “I think you got my rib. Did I look that bad?”

  “No, I just got so scared,” Sue said as she began to cry, “I can't believe I hit you like that.”

  “Hey,” Ross shouted as he ran inside the door with a golf club in one hand and the gun in the other. He went straight to the area where Sue was holding Danny up and looked around, “I heard you scream. What happened?”

  “I knocked over some cans. It's so dang dark in here,” Danny said with clenched teeth.

  “And it scared me,” Sue added.

  Ross looked where Danny was holding his side, “But what happened to you?”

  “When I heard the cans, I freaked and swung my club. I think I may have broken some of Danny’s ribs. We need to get somewhere safer, not in the open. We can talk then. I don’t think anyone’s in here or they would have come running,” Sue said in a voice higher than normal. Then she added, “Go lock the doors back up.”

  Ross went back outside to turn the car off and lock it up. He then went to the front door and locked the security bolt before flipping a stack of shopping carts on their sides in front of the door. He stacked them over five feet before returning with the last cart to where Sue and Danny stood waiting.

  Ross went to the food aisle and began loading the cart with everything he thought wouldn’t need to be cooked. He then went to the first aid area and got all the Ace bandage wrap from the shelf before meeting Sue and Danny next to the pharmacy door.

  Danny was exerting his expertise on the deadbolt lock when Ross approached. “What did you say you did again Danny?” Ross asked in a skeptical tone.

  “I learned this in college. I don’t use it much nowadays though,” Danny said. He then made a move to sharp and took a hissed breath in through his clenched teeth.

  Ross looked at Sue behind Danny’s back and mouthed the word “Much?”

  Sue didn’t respond, though. She just kept looking back toward Danny’s ribs where she had hit him.

  After a few moments, Danny was able to pick the locks with some tools from the photo lab. Ross entered first with his club raised and searched the pharmacy. “It's okay, he shouted when he reached the back end.

  Sue helped Danny inside and to a chair before pulling the shopping cart in behind her. She closed the heavy metal door back behind her and relocked the deadbolt.

  Ross made his way around and made sure all the metal window locks were set in place before pulling a bag of beef jerky and a cola from the shopping cart and sitting down. He hadn’t eaten a real meal in a short while and enjoyed the dried meat.

  “If you take off your shirt I can wrap up your ribs,” Sue said as she sat down across from Danny with an Ace bandage in her hand.

  “Sure. Might need to,” Danny said as he began pulling his shirt off and stopped halfway. “Can you help, I can't raise my arm any higher.”

  Sue stood up so fast the bandage rolled across the floor and unwound. “Sorry, I just feel so guilty,” she said with a remorseful look. She then pulled Danny’s shirt the rest of the way off and gasped as she saw the purple and tan bruise where she had hit him. The bruise was the size of a baseball and centered around a welt.

  The first thing that she did was to find the first aid kit in the pharmacy since they hadn’t brought in their bags in yet. They had decided to wait until the rain quit to do that. After fifteen minutes, Sue had Danny’s chest completely wrapped in Ace bandages.

  She looked toward Ross and asked, “How is your cut doing anyway?”

  “It hasn’t been bleeding anymore,” he answered pulling the bandages off his head. “Still getting headaches though.”

  Sue stood up without saying anything and walked to where the prescription drug area was. She came back and tossed a bottle at Ross and one at Danny.

  “Tramadol,” Ross read aloud. “What did the doc give you?” he asked looking at Danny.

  Danny stared at the bottle and squinted, “Ace-something… with codeine. That must mean it’s good, it’s got codeine.”

  “No way. Why do you get the good stuff,” Ross laughed then looked at Sue, “It's because you feel guilty.”

  Sue laughed too but it sounded forced, “It's Tylenol with codeine and it's because he could use it. He probably has a broken rib, remember?”

  Their conversation carried them through the rest of the day as they sat, confined, in the small pharmacy area. Ross took the first watch as the other two fell asleep. The store was hot without air circulation, and the pharmacy was even hotter.

  He sat in the cushioned chair in the corner looking back and forth from th
e door to the window. He knew that there was no way that anything could get into either one since they were built to stop a gun, but Ross still felt anxious. He was thinking about his habits again because he noticed that he had been chewing his nails without even realizing it.

  The next thing he saw was his classroom at school and his professor was the only other person in the room with him. Ross had fallen asleep.

  The warm morning sunlight shone through the glass front door of the vocational building at Cherokee High School. Charlie slammed a cold piece of sheet metal across the door’s metal frame and Cedric lit his acetylene torch. He touched the blue pen flame to the corner of the metal to melt it to the frame. His older brother let go once the metal was fused and sat down against the wall. The two brothers had just finished sealing every glass door and window on the bottom level so that nothing could just break the glass and come in.

  Everyone else had piled into the classroom that had once been the Culinary Arts room. In there, Ben and Jack were tapping into the propane line for the gas stove to power the generator. The vocational building had multiple large gas tanks—some for the Culinary Arts room and some for the greenhouses. The room was also right next to the closet where the breaker box was, so they would hopefully be able to hook some wiring into the generator.

  After Jack had saved Cedric’s life, they followed the plan as normal as possible. Charlie was waiting at an opening and when he heard Jack blow his horn, he cracked the bay door and shined his flashlight out. Jack was then able to drive into the bay and they locked all the doors down tight and began sealing off the building. They were all exhausted but nobody had slept all night except the two kids: Julie and Adam.

  After he was done welding the metal to the doorframe, Cedric followed his brother into the classroom to meet everyone else.

  Eliza shot from her chair when her sons entered the room and gave Charlie a hug. When she hugged Cedric next, though, he winced as his back shot with a stinging pain in multiple places.

  “What’s wrong?” His mother asked him when he had jerked.

  “My back got a little hurt,” he said as he took the welding jacket off and then his shirt.

  Eliza sighed a pained expression and said, “Your back is full of cuts. What happened?”

  Jack laughed and said, “He jumped off a car and thought the pavement full of glass would break his fall nicely.”

  They all laughed except Eliza and Sherry, who were now also behind Cedric looking at his back. Nobody had noticed that his back had gotten torn up since he had switched out welding jackets. He kept one in the shop at school for class. He took the wet one off without even looking at it and threw it to the side. Once the dry one was on, there was no way to see the cuts and scratches.

  For the next half hour, Cedric laid on his stomach having the cuts cleaned and having jokes made about it by his older brother.

  “Did you hear the one about the guy who tried to make himself more appealing to an undead hoard of mindless people?” Charlie teased.

  Cedric had already heard enough of his brother and was now tuning him out, but Charlie continued anyway, “Oh wait, you don’t have to, you’re the idiot who did it.” By this point, Charlie was the only one laughing at his jokes, but that didn’t bother him.

  Eliza had just finished taping the last cut closed, “I think that’s all of them. No major damage, just full of dirt and a few pieces of glass.” Cedric had actually felt the pain while he worked but thought it was just bruised.

  By this time, the generator was running strong and the lights were on. They had set the generator on its lowest setting and only used the lights in the kitchen and shops to conserve gas.

  Cedric got off the table and slid his shirt back on. He then started setting his weapons back into place. He looked around the room and noticed that everyone except Eliza, Charlie, and himself had made their beds. He walked to the counter and grabbed two CB radios, tossing one to Charlie. “Got it in ya to stay awake a while longer?” Cedric asked.

  Charlie yawned but agreed and asked, “What are we doing?”

  “You're staying here,” he replied, “I’m going to go check all the doors and windows.”

  Class continued through a droning monotone that was his professor’s voice. This class always reminded Ross of those eye drop commercials with Ben Stein. Ross wondered idly why every one of his classmates was absent today. “They must have all gotten tired of the professor,” he said out loud, not meaning to.

  The old man stopped mid-sentence in his lecture to stare at Ross. He stared for what must have been five minutes in silence before saying, “Go on, Edmond, did you have something you think is prudent to the lecture?”

  This always irritated Ross that this old man, who had a ton of degrees, could never seem to get anyone’s name right. But before he could correct the professor or give any answer, he heard loud thunder crashing inside the classroom. Then he started shaking violently, this wasn’t thunder, he thought.

  “Earthquake,” Ross shouted as he jolted awake. His heart was pumping fiercely as he took in his surroundings. Sue was the one shaking him awake and he could hear outside that the storm had gotten worse.

  “Wow,” Danny said with overdramatic exasperation. “Here I am dreaming about these infected blokes and you had to go dream about an earthquake? How does that fit in?”

  It took Ross a few moments to speak, his heart was still pounding and the dream seemed so real that he couldn’t think straight. He didn’t respond to Danny but said to Sue, “Sorry I fell asleep, not much on watch, am I?”

  Sue just laughed it off and smiled. “It’s not like anything can get in here anyway.” She stood back up and pulled the metal shudder of the pharmacy window open.

  Ross got up and found the half-eaten bag of jerky on the counter. He began eating as he worked a plan out in his head. “I’ll go ahead and get the store ready so that we don’t have to stay cooped up in the pharmacy all the time. I think we should still use it for when we sleep or are just sitting around, but I don’t think that it's necessary to stay cooped in here all the time.”

  “I agree,” Sue said, “I’ll go with you, though. I know where most things are here, so it will make it easier.”

  Danny didn’t say anything, he just laid back down and put a hand on his bruised ribs.

  Sue followed Ross out of the pharmacy and they made a complete trip around the store to make sure it was clear before Ross took the magazine from the gun and slid it in his pocket.

  Ross had noticed two things on their trip through the store: a cordless power drill under the desk in the office and a few sheets of plywood in the stockroom. He figured they were left over from when someone had driven into the side of the building at the drive-through.

  “Can you go get that drill from the office and meet me at the front door in five?” he said to Sue.

  “I know its gun shaped, but I don’t think it will do much good,” she teased before agreeing.

  Ross just laughed as he headed back to the stockroom and loaded all the plywood onto a stock cart. He began wheeling it to the front. Sue was standing there looking out of the front door impatiently, but when Ross approached, she looked confused.

  “What on Earth are you doing?” She asked conveying that she thought he was doing something very stupid.

  “Boarding up the windows. What else,” he responded smugly. “It is glass after all.”

  Sue’s face brightened up with understanding, “Oh. I knew that.”

  “I bet,” was all Ross responded with even though a dozen more teasing remarks ran through his head. He didn’t have time to utter them though because he had started pulling the stacked carts off each other and away from the door.

  It only took Sue and himself thirty minutes to pull the carts away and screw the boards up on over the glass front. They didn’t have enough to do the top, but Ross thought it wouldn’t make a difference since zombies aren’t fifteen feet tall anyway.

  After the wood was up, t
hey began restacking the carts in front of the wood for extra support. They also decided to chain the two emergency doors closed. Sue went back to let Danny know how everything was going while Ross began clearing the stockroom out. This stockroom was designed differently than the one at his store. He thought he could easily pull the car into it. At least, once all the junk was moved out of the way they could. The rain had let up enough, so they unchained the emergency door next to the delivery bay door and Ross went out.

  The air was cold and wet when he stepped out. He glanced around and didn’t see anyone, so he shut the door behind him. Sue would wait by the door and listen if he yelled. He gripped his golf club tight in his hand again and began to walk at a brisk speed; he stopped when he got to the corner of the building and glared around the corner.

  There, standing twenty feet away were three infected. He turned to go back to the door; he would just try again later. In a spot that, until now, had been concealed by the dumpster next door, he saw, to his horror, that five more were watching his every move. And they were less than fifteen feet away.

  Chapter Nine:

  CONVERGENCE

  Cedric spent the next few hours wandering the vocational building and bringing useful items to the kitchen. He unloaded the vehicles, occasionally getting help from Adam after the boy had woken up. He didn’t mind the work, it kept him from thinking about sleeping. Cedric knew if he laid down, or even sat still for a moment, he would be out like a light. By the time everyone else was up, Cedric had managed to fix a livable area for everyone in the classroom that joined with the kitchen.

  “Well, what’s next?” Ben asked when everyone had joined him in the new living area.

  Nobody spoke, but Cedric noticed most people’s gazes turned to him for an answer. When it became clear that no one else was going to answer Cedric said, “I think that the building is very livable. We have almost everything we need to make it that way at least.”