On Our Own

by Silver, L. D.

  “We’re fine. They’re all the way over there, behind a fence.” He thrusts a finger behind him.

  “Yeah, and you thought the compound was empty of zombies until this morning!”

  “You’re fucking nuts. We’re fine up here, Delilah!”

  “No, we’re not. We’re not fine and we’re not safe. We just have that illusion. We need to keep our wits.”

  “I need to relax. I don’t know about you, Delilah, but I can’t keep going like this all the time!”

  “You can’t? Or are you just used to being high?” This is getting ugly. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me right now. His face is twisted and angry.

  “Get out of my sight.” He turns his back to me.

  “Fine.” I stalk toward the door and then stop. “Believe it or not, Sam, you’re better than this. You’re better than this and you’re smarter than this. You made it through a world of zombies and you’re alive. Stop being stupid, and stop trying to kill yourself because you made it through.”

  “I’m not –”

  He’s shouting as I slam the door behind me. I’m shaking and crying as I run down the steps. I make it down to my bedroom and slam the door, throwing myself onto the bed as the tears get so thick the room is blurry.

  And then I realize a part of what I just said to Sam is what I really wanted to say to my brother.

  Chapter 68

  Mike was a normal, fun kid with great grades all through elementary school. He wasn’t popular and he wasn’t an outcast; he had a nice group of friends who let me hang out with them, too.

  The summer before middle school Mike’s best friend, Brian, moved to Chicago. I remember Mike being nervous the week before middle school, and wondering if he would find a new best friend.

  He made it through the first week just fine, without being thrown in a locker or getting in a fight, and then the Friday of the second week he brought someone new home.

  The new guy was named Dean. He had medium-length blond hair, the remnants of a tan, and clear, cold blue eyes. He would smile at you without the smile lighting his eyes, and in fact they always looked a bit off, a bit dead, whether he was smiling or not. Looking into his eyes always gave me a bit of the heebie-jeebies, so after a while I avoided it.

  Dean was very pleasant when he first met us. He was on the soccer team, a bit athletic, and was always wearing flip-flops which showed off the hairy tops of his feet. My mom was really impressed with him at first, but then she was working outside of the house and didn’t see what was going on.

  Dean got my brother high from the very first time he came over. That first afternoon I flew into my brother’s room right after school, anxious to share my day with him, and Dean washed all over my excitement like a cold bucket of water. He lay in my brother’s bed, smoking weed and grinning at me with his lazy, cold smile as we were introduced.

  Then he got my brother high again and again.

  Soon Dean, my brother, and a mix of kids were getting high every afternoon. Gradually, my brother’s old friends stopped coming by. The new friends were loud, dirty, and not really nice. I stopped going in there.

  After a while, my parents stopped liking Dean. They found out a bit more about him and what was going on. Then, Dean stopped coming around, and I found out from other kids why – Dean went to juvie for dealing drugs.

  With relief, I waited for my brother to come back, but instead the afternoon parties continued.

  Then one day, I came home and found the house mostly silent. My parents weren’t home, and the flow of kids from the kitchen to Mike’s room was absent. So I went to his door and knocked. I waited a few minutes but didn’t get an answer, so I decided to go in anyways.

  Mike was sitting on the floor cross-legged, all by himself. The room wasn’t full of smoke. But for some reason, my heart started pounding.

  “Hi, Mike,” I greeted.

  He looked up at me and there was a goofy smile on his face. His eyes weren’t focused, really; instead, he looked like he was trying really hard not to fall asleep. I snapped my fingers within inches of his face and he didn’t even flinch.

  “Mike, what are you on?” This hard, angry voice came out of me, and I didn’t even recognize myself.

  His grin widened into a smile and he tried to make letters out of his fingers, but they didn’t work properly.

  “Ahhhh,” he finally said, gave a bit of a guffaw, and then he forgot I was there.

  I stood still, and saw my brother forget I was there. I looked into his stupid, goofy, unfocused eyes and saw it happen.

  My brother became a zombie long before it was popular.

  Chapter 69

  There’s a knock on the door. I open it and find Sam outside.

  “Please, let me in.”

  I leave it open and then flounce onto the bed. Sam shuts the door, sits on the bed and hugs me.

  I really wasn’t expecting that.

  “I’m sorry I yelled,” he apologizes. He’s quiet for a few moments, resting his head against mine. “You care about me.”

  I’m not sure if that’s a question or not. I pull back so I can see his eyes.

  “Yes, I care about you.” How can he not know that? I hug him, the look in his eyes bugging me. It’s like he thought I might say no, that I might kick him. Then there’s this other part, this warm part that starts blossoming in his eyes as soon as I say yes.

  His arms tighten around me and he pulls us both backward until we’re stretched out on the bed, cuddling.

  We’re quiet for a long while, and then gradually I tell him about my brother. I tell him parts I never told anyone else, not even my parents.

  He hugs me as I cry. I may not ever be able to fix things with Mike, but getting it out, telling my friend and hearing him say it’s okay, makes me feel better.

  Eventually I stop crying, and I’m beginning to think he might have fallen asleep when I feel him kiss my hair, and he starts to talk quietly.

  “When my parents divorced, it was like my family just melted beneath me. My parents went off in different directions and I was the only one left. I lived with my mom for a while, but she was either at work or with her new boyfriend. They packed up and moved to Montana, and she sent me to my dad’s house so I could stay at the same school.

  “Dad got married six months after the divorce to this blonde chick who wasn’t anything like Mom. She didn’t really know how to act around me. My dad went to work and left me with her. Said he had to spend extra time at work to help his career.

  “I would get in trouble at school and he didn’t care. Blondey showed up because they called her. She’d bitch because she missed work.

  “I got into some trouble and wound up in juvie for a few days. After they let me out, they sent me to foster care for a while, and we had family counseling. That’s where I met James.

  “First person in a while who cared. Like you.” He hugs me against him. “James was cool. Knew things, knew how to be. He had a family like mine and it didn’t even faze him. He showed me a bunch of stuff. Then we met Steve and when things started going down, we were ready.”

  “What happened to him?” I ask.

  “James or Steve?”

  “James.”

  He’s quiet for a long time, and I think I probably shouldn’t have asked him.

  “When we got here, the area wasn’t clear. We split up. I thought I had my area clear. No, I know I had it clear. But a zombie came out of nowhere. James stepped in. Saved my life.”

  “Did he turn?”

  “No.”

  I hug him tighter and I don’t ask any more questions, because he’s gulping and it looks like he’s trying to breathe. He turns away, but I notice a tear on his face. I nestle into him and try to tell him it’s okay, even when I know it’s not.

  I fall asleep with his arms tight around me.

  Chapter 70

  In the morning, we go right back to looking through the computers. I find an interesting thread, but I’m still abou
t to bash my head against the desk from boredom when I feel a cool, wet nose against my leg. I look down and Sunshine wags her tail and licks me.

  “Hey girl,” I say and rub her head. “Hey, Sam, is there anywhere I can take Sunshine and throw a stick or something?”

  He looks up, his gaze taking in me and the dog. “Hmmm. How about a picnic outside?”

  “On the roof?”

  “No. Outside for real.”

  “Sure.”

  So we grab some food, plates and drinks, put them in bags and then head to the Jeep. This time we pile into Sam’s, with Cassie sitting in front and me and Sunshine in the back.

  We emerge from the tunnel and it’s like going through a waterfall of sunlight. Everything’s so bright. Sam takes us down a different path than what we came in on. It’s a wooded lane with plenty of bumps which we take so fast it feels like the Jeep’s hopping into the sky. Cassie gives a little squeal every time we hit air.

  We tear around two corners in quick succession, one to the right and one to the left, and then we come out into a clearing rich with green grass about half the size of a football field. The clearing ends in a cliff with mountains visible in the distance. The sky is a perfect bright blue and filled with big, fluffy white clouds.

  We pile out of the Jeep, and Sam and Cassie set up the picnic. I run to the edge of the woods to grab a stick and throw it for Sunshine. She runs full-out, passing the stick and then turning sharply to pick it up in her mouth and race back to me.

  “Eww,” I say, rubbing a bit of the slobber from the stick on my jeans. “Good girl. Get it!” I shout, and throw it again. She fetches it a couple more times and then it’s time to eat. I sit down and plow into some chips and cold fried chicken.

  “So, what have we all found out so far?” Sam asks.

  Cassie grins. “I don’t know what you guys have, but I found what I was looking for.” She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a piece of paper and slaps it on the ground.

  “We have a printer?” I ask.

  “How long have you had that?” Sam asks.

  “Yes.” She answers me, then turns to Sam. “This morning before you guys even started.”

  “Then why did we keep looking?” I ask, thinking of the intense boredom of this morning.

  “I wanted to be sure.” She shrugs.

  Sam gives her a dirty look, followed by one from me.

  “So, what did you find?”

  “It’s an email between this guy and my dad. Apparently, they knew each other from some class they took together a long time ago. Anyways, at the start my dad wasn’t even officially a part of the research. This guy asked my dad to look at this problem because they were such good friends and my dad was so good at everything.

  “So he sent my dad his research, as well as some samples of the vaccine that weren’t working. My dad didn’t even get to start with infected blood – he started with a broken vaccine.” She stabs the paper and sits back proudly.

  “Why wouldn’t they send him the infected blood?” I ask.

  “They didn’t want to let the blood out of the lab. In fact, my dad came here at one point.”

  “Did you find anything saying why they were involved with this at all?”

  “The guy was a teacher here and worked part-time for the drug company, but that’s all I found.”

  “Hmmm,” I ponder.

  “I might be able to help answer that,” Sam says. We both look at him. “It’s a drug company, right? What can you tell me about AIDS and a vaccine?”

  “There isn’t one,” I respond.

  “That’s right.” Sam points at me. “Instead, we have a list of drugs, some very expensive, that will keep you alive.”

  “Okay.”

  “What if the drug companies could create something like AIDS, scary as hell, but manageable with the right drugs, like AIDS?”

  “That’s horrible, Sam! And not very likely.”

  “Really? I’ve been going through the military side of things, right? They were originally included for military applications of a new drug and then they expanded it to a cleanup.”

  “I heard a lot of rumors after India that this was something created by the military,” I tell them.

  “I did, too, and it makes sense. But I came across this long email by the head of one of the divisions, talking about this great drug one of the other divisions was working on and how if it could be tweaked just a bit, the military would really like it. He was asking for marketing ideas for a drug that would create soldiers who couldn’t feel pain, who would then create chaos in a region and then be ‘reclaimed’ when the job was finished.”

  “Reclaimed?” Cassie asks.

  “Turned back to human with something like the vaccine, only different, right?” I try to understand.

  Sam nods and I get a chill. It describes the zombies, all except for the part of reclaiming someone.

  “Did they ever get the drug to turn someone back into human?” I ask.

  “No.” He shakes his head, dashing my hopes for ransacking the complex behind us for a cure.

  “What did you find?” Cassie asks me.

  “Nothing. Just a bunch of meeting notes and agendas.”

  “Oh, well.” Cassie shoves her shoes off her feet and jumps up, grabbing the stick. “C’mon, Sunshine.”

  She runs off, waving the stick at the dog, back to being a kid again. I shake my head and grin at Sam. He looks at me suspiciously, then shrugs and runs after her.

  I sit and finish my lunch, thinking. Sam was right to be suspicious of me. I just outright lied to both of them.

  I did find something. I found evidence that someone tampered with Cassie’s dad’s results, deliberately shifting and mutating The Shot. Each batch was different, but pushed toward the same goal. It was all very hush-hush, directed by one of the executives of the company.

  Each batch of The Shot was pushed and mutated and tested, all with one goal in mind. I finish my lunch and run off to play with Sunshine and my friends, with one phrase going round and round in my head.

  ‘Sustainable immortality.’

  Chapter 71

  We toss the stick for Sunshine for a while before we change it to a form of tag. The humans have to tag a person with the stick, and that person throws it, and then whoever Sunshine brings the stick to is it and everything starts over. It sounds really complicated, but in the end it’s just a bunch of running around, giggling and falling over.

  Eventually I get tired and thirsty, and I go back to the picnic area and collapse on the blue blanket we’ve spread out. I grab a Coke and laugh as Sunshine brings the stick to Cassie for the third time in a row.

  Sam joins me on the blanket, grabbing another soda out of the bag and cracking it open. He takes a good, long drink.

  “I think Sunshine has chosen Cassie as her owner,” he says.

  “I think you’re right,” I agree, even though I’m a bit disappointed. I like dogs, so it would have been neat if Sunshine thought I was hers. “Cassie does seem to spend a lot of time with her.”

  “Yeah.” He takes another drink. “Look, I was thinking. Instead of you guys trying to find that compound north of us, how about you just stay here? There’s a lab and everything.”

  There’s this earnest, hopeful look in his eyes, like a puppy looks at you when you might take it home.

  I think about the last few days and how fun it’s been. How nice it’s been to be safe. And yeah, I think about how much I like him. I smile.

  “I’ll talk about it with Cassie,” I tell him. And this smile, this glorious, happy smile spreads across his face and his eyes glow. It’s like watching somebody suddenly shine. I feel my smile grow wider.

  And that’s when the barking starts.

  #

  Sunshine’s standing at the edge of the clearing, body ramrod straight, barking her tail off. Cassie runs toward Sunshine and I jump to my feet.

  “This can’t be good,” I mutter and run toward them.

&n
bsp; “No shit,” Sam says behind me.

  Cassie screams.

  I don’t remember hearing her scream before. My brave girl, screaming.

  I put on an extra burst of speed even though I already feel a stitch forming. Cassie’s gone beyond the edge of the clearing. She’s gone into the woods and Sunshine’s gone, too.

  It seems like forever; time is slowing down, and what was a short distance of green stretches longer and longer.

  Then, eventually, I reach the edge of the clearing and burst into the forest.

  Cassie’s there, beating the shit out of a zombie on the ground with a tree branch. No kidding.

  “That’s my girl,” I say under my breath.

  “Delilah, it was great, Sunshine totally jumped him and knocked him to the ground for me!” Cassie says, all in one breath.

  “That’s great,” I respond, noticing there isn’t any blood or anything on Sunshine - just in case. I don’t think the virus has jumped to canines, but it’s good to see the lack of a bite.

  Then I hear it: a long, low zombie moan, followed by another and another.

  Chapter 72

  “Cassie,” I whisper, holding my hand out.

  A slow zombie in military fatigues ambles out of the brush and bumps into a tree. I see another behind him. The question is: how many are there? And are any of them fast zombies?

  Then I hear crashing, like something moving very fast through the forest. That would be a yes.

  “Cassie, run!” I shout. I grab her hand and start pulling as she looks over her shoulder.

  “Sunshine, c’mon!” Cassie yells.

  And then we’re running, running as fast as we can for the Jeep.

  “Run! Get the Jeep started!” I shout to a confused Sam as we get closer. I see him look past me and his mouth drop open, and then he pivots and races for the Jeep.

  Dear God, why did we run so much before?