by Megan Berry
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter One
I’m numb, not emotionally. Though I suppose if I let myself think about it, I’m that too... Emotions I can push down and ignore at the moment. More pressingly, I’m physically numb, and there is nothing I can do about it. The cold on this mountain is worse than anything I’ve ever felt in my entire seventeen years. It’s relentless and draining, and it’s only the tail end of November. The snow is up to my knees, and we get a fresh dump almost every night. It makes walking even short distances exhausting.
I toss a log into the back of the truck, not even caring that I didn’t make it to the very back; we’ve given up stacking the wood neatly. I’m tired and hungry and cranky, and sick to death of snow. I know I sound like a whiner, but everything is becoming too much. Megan, Abby, and I are still on wood chopping duty. We’ve filled the woodshed to the rafters and also the back entrance of the kitchen. We thought we were done—but Dad, Ryan, and Regg are building a second woodshed now—and it’s even bigger than the old one. I thought they were crazy at first, but now that the snow has started falling and the cold has settled in, I realize how much wood we’ve actually been using. I just hope we can stay ahead of it.
The only upside to any of this is that the cold isn’t just freezing us to death, it’s freezing the zombies too. We haven’t seen any on the mountain in over a week, and yesterday when Regg, Silas, and my dad went down the mountain to look for supplies, they came back and told us the craziest thing. The zombies are freezing solid. I imagine a zombie popsicle and make a face.
“Tag, you’re it!” Megan yells across to me as she slides out of the toasty warm truck. I don’t need to be told twice. I jump into the front seat, and right away I’m assaulted with a blast of heat. I gasp when it makes my skin prickle painfully as it tries to thaw my frozen flesh. I bite the end of my gloves, pull them from my frozen fingers, and fumble with the zipper on my jacket. I pull it open so the heat doesn’t have a barrier from getting to my body. I take a look at the clock and begin counting down my ten minute warm up break.
It’s never enough time. I’m tempted to fib and stay in longer, but that wouldn’t be fair to Abby, who’s been freezing her butt off for the last twenty minutes. I quickly zip my coat back up and put on my gloves before I force myself out, gasping at the first icy blast of wind that hits me. My face prickles with pain as the skin begins to absorb the chill, and the cycle starts all over again.
We fill the back of the truck with chopped wood and decide to call it a day. It’s only ten in the morning. We might go out again this afternoon if we get really bored, but for now I don’t think any of us can stand it for one minute longer than we have to.
We warm up as we drive back to the cabin, quietly enjoying the motorized heat that’s pumping through the vents. It’s really become a luxury and almost makes chopping the wood worth it.
The cab of the truck is silent; we don’t laugh and joke like we used to. We don’t giggle and blurt out hypotheticals either, like what we would do if we won the lottery, or what we would’ve taken in college, or what we would do if the zombies suddenly went away and the world returned to normal… I think we’ve all given up hope of that happening, even with the tentative good news that they’re freezing up.
We pull in beside the poor dented-up F-150 in the driveway, and we all climb out of the vehicle, hesitant to leave the heat behind. Sometimes I feel a bit like the truck Ryan and I took from that dealership the day we left Camp Freedom. It was shiny and new when the apocalypse began, and now it’s ugly and scarred. It can never go back to the way it was before. Neither can I, no matter what happens with the zombies.
“You aren’t coming in the house?” Abby asks when I turn and start walking in the other direction. I shake my head, even though it’s pretty obvious that I’m not. I’m already half frozen; a few more minutes won’t make much difference. “Do you want me to come with you?” she offers, knowing exactly where I’m headed.
I give her a small smile, grateful to have a friend who would freeze her ass off for me, even though it’s the last thing she wants to do.
“It’s okay, I’ll go by myself,” I tell her. Despite her attempt to hide it, I can tell she’s relieved. I turn and walk around the side of the cabin to the secluded area beneath a trio of evergreens. It’s quiet back here, and it smells like pine. I take a deep, calming breath as I stare at the ground beneath the protective boughs. The earth is almost completely covered over again. Only the mar upon the snow remains from when we had to dig up the dirt. The ground was too frozen to make a proper headstone. If I’m still alive in the spring, it’s the first thing I’ll do.
I look across the trees to the huge pieces of equipment parked in a neat row, and I feel thankful for them too. We wouldn’t have been able to dig the hole if it hadn’t been for the machines. They cut through the frozen ground better than a shovel ever could.
I have no flowers to lay on Sunny’s grave, and that starts the tears. I sink down to the ground and stare at the brown snow in anger. It’s muddy and ugly, just like our life here. I use my gloves to shovel some of the fresh, clean snow overtop, as a sob rips through my body. I can’t bear to look at it, but I stare at her grave as a punishment. I should have been here for her—I could have prevented the bite. Tears fall down my cheeks and freeze to my face, but I don’t care.
Silas was right. There is no place in this world for kids anymore, not for his brother, and not for Sunny. I don’t know why, but I always thought Sunny would be the exception. I thought because we loved her so much we would be able to keep the badness away. It was naïve and stupid.
A dark outline in the distance draws my attention. I quickly wipe away my tears as my hand reaches instinctively to my hip for my gun. The figure waves its arms up and down—and I relax. Whoever it is, it’s human. Zombies don’t make purposeful motions like that.
I stare at the figure intently, hoping it’s Silas coming to see me. As they draw closer, I recognize the jacket, and my heart sinks a little. Ryan.
“I miss her too,” Ryan says as he comes to a stop beside me and drops to his knees by my side. I want to answer him, but my throat closes up with emotion and I can’t speak. I nod instead, keeping my eyes on the frozen earth that now holds the body of a little girl who meant so much to all of us.
I glance over at Ryan and see him wiping a tear from his cheek. I feel so bad for him. Out of all of us, he was probably the closest to Sunny. He was so good with her, always reading her stories and putting her needs first. He was so patient and kind. Guilt swamps me; I could have been better.
“Are you ready to go back in the house?” Ryan asks, interrupting my inner blame game.
I shake my head, making him frown.
“This isn’t healthy, Jane,” he tells me gently. “She’s gone. Nothing is going to change that or bring her back. She wouldn’t want you sitting out here freezing to death,” he tells me.
Even though I can recognize the ring of truth in his words, I shrug. It’s not really my goal to freeze to death, but I guess if it happens, it happens—a small perk. I glance up sharply at Ryan when that horrible thought invades my mind, and I slowly force my body to move, struggling in the snow with all my layers of clothing. I’m ashamed of myself. There must be billions o
f people who have died since this thing with the zombies began. For some reason I’ve made it this far, and I still have most of my family. It would be a selfish cop out to give up now—not to mention what it would do to my mom and dad. I have to pull myself together; who cares if it’s for everyone else but me, sometimes that’s the only reason a person can find, and it has to be enough.
Ryan gets to his feet when he sees me move, a lot more nimbly than me, and gives me a hand. He doesn’t let go once I’m standing, and I’m too grateful to have someone dragging me through the snow drifts to protest. We make our way back to the cabin and kick our boots off outside, shaking them off before venturing inside. The cabin is warm-ish, but it’s not the same even heat distribution that a furnace would put out. At first it was so weird not to be able to just go to the thermostat and turn up the heat when we got cold—now I barely remember a time when life was that easy.
I tear my gloves off with shaking fingers and fumble with my coat. My bumbling fingers slide uselessly off the zipper. Ryan pushes my fingers away and unzips my coat for me. I open my mouth to protest, but he steps away right after, so it just seems childish to make a fuss. “You need to be careful in the cold, Jane,” he tells me gently, and I nod automatically as I hang my coat up and flop down on the couch beside Abby. Silas is there too, but he doesn’t look up. Abby holds up her blanket to me, and I dive underneath, curling my toes underneath her warm legs to try and warm them up faster. She jumps a little but doesn’t complain, and again I’m grateful to her.
The cabin only has the one fireplace, and it isn’t large enough to heat the entire house, so we don’t. The cabin wasn’t really designed for off the grid living. We keep the doors to the kitchen and spare bedrooms shut tightly, with towels stuffed along the bottom of the door to keep out the cold air. Out of desperation, we’ve even boarded off the top of the stairs with plywood to keep the heat contained. It took two days of constantly feeding the fire our hard-earned wood and still freezing our butts off before we came up with our makeshift solution.
It isn’t easy living in what basically amounts to a one-room shack with eight people, but we probably have it better than a lot of people do right now. You know, on account of them all being zombies.
We keep two big mattresses downstairs. My mom and dad sleep on one. Abby, Megan, and I sleep on the other. Silas sleeps on the couch, which we push to the side at night to make room for us all, and Ryan and Regg each sleep on a mattress pad that they scavenged from the RV. During the day, we move everything into the spare bedroom where my parents used to sleep and pull it out again at night. It’s repetitive, but it gives us something to do.
The room has become a little hoarder-ish since we had to move all of our canned goods into the heated room. Mom was worried it would change the taste of them if they froze, so we all agreed to give up a tiny bit of room for our stash. Canned beans are bad enough, I don’t know what I would do if they tasted even worse.
We still use the kitchen for stuff like flour, sugar, cereals, and all that stuff, but it’s basically a freezer now. So we also leave meat from the animals Silas kills just sitting on the counter, and it’s frozen solid within the hour. Sometimes I have nightmares that the fire dies in the middle of the night and I turn into a solid chunk of meat like the deer and rabbits that Silas brings home.
I glance up at Silas, but he’s still staring into the flames, so I look away in frustration. Abby knows exactly what’s going on and squeezes my knee underneath the blanket in sympathy. Regg and my dad are still out back working on the woodshed that will soon be the bane of my existence, and Ryan joins us on the couch, squeezing in beside Abby.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask, and Megan points to the kitchen door.
“In the freezer—I mean kitchen,” she says with a snicker at her own unintentional joke, and I nod. Mom has pretty much become the official cook around here. I think it’s nice for her though, she always enjoyed feeding people. Her culinary reach has become a little more stunted with the supplies we have available, but I still see a look of pride on her face when we all dig in to her meal after a hard day of fighting to stay alive. She’s kind of like Abby in that way. It’s like she doesn’t want to admit the zombies exist or have changed things.
I look over at Silas and see that his stare has moved from the fire to the couch cushion beside him, and my stomach clenches. I know exactly what he’s thinking about. I’m thinking about her too.
I fight the tears that want to fall; I’m so sick of bawling all the time, and I’m sure everyone else is sick of seeing it. Losing Sunny has been such a shock—she lasted so long after the bite. After hearing Jack’s story about surviving his own bite, we really thought she’d be fine.
I join Silas in staring at the couch cushion. Mom’s already scrubbed it and flipped it over, but in my mind, I can still see the blood.
Twelve nerve-wracking hours after Sunny was bitten, we’d stupidly begun to relax. Sunny had even settled down and was sleeping peacefully on the couch. Jack had gone back to his own cabin for the night, confident that Sunny was like him—immune. Everyone decided to sleep in the living room because none of us could stand the idea of leaving Sunny alone, and my parents didn’t want any of us sleeping in the room with Sunny until we were sure.
I’d nodded off too when a low growl woke me. I knew before I opened my eyes—
Silas was quicker than anyone else. Halfway through her second growl, before I even got my eyes completely open, he spiked her in the temple and killed her.
Chaos erupted after that. I’d gone a little crazy, and Ryan was no better. Everyone was crying and screaming, trying to wrap their minds around why she’d turned. We still don’t know why it took so long, but we’ve talked the scenarios to death. The bite went through her jacket, so maybe only a small portion of one tooth punctured her skin… Maybe the zombie had dry mouth and didn’t transfer a lot of saliva. She didn’t turn like people usually did, so did that mean she fought it for as long as she could?
I sigh and shake my head to clear my morbid thoughts. Silas doesn’t look up, and I force myself to look away from him. He did what he had to do, but I’m not sure he’s ever going to forgive himself.
I almost wish we could pull the mattresses out now and go to bed, but it’s not even noon.
Abby pulls out the beat-up Monopoly board; I don’t really want to play, but she’s looking at me with her sad puppy dog eyes. I know she’s just trying to cheer me up, so I put on a brave face. Megan, Abby, Ryan, and I start a game of Monopoly. Silas shakes his head when Abby asks him if he wants to play too, and then he gets up and leaves without a word. I watch him go with a frown on my face, and I turn back to find Abby and Ryan looking at me in concern.
“He’s being an asshole,” Ryan says baldly, and I flush. He’s right, but I’m never going to admit that to him.
“He’s having a hard time…with everything that’s happened,” I tell them, unable to use Sunny’s name yet without crying. Ryan snorts and motions to the one-room, boarded-up cabin around us.
“We all are. It isn’t an excuse, Jane. You deserve better than that guy,” Ryan fires back, and I look over at Abby. She isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. I know her well enough to realize that means she agrees with Ryan, but she doesn’t want to upset me.
I sigh and pick up the dice. “Are we going to play this game, or what?” I demand, wanting to get it over with so we can eat, go to bed, and repeat the exact same thing tomorrow. Thankfully they let me change the subject, and I pass the dice to Abby so she can go first. She’s addicted to this game.
Chapter Two
“I’m worried about you,” Mom tells me the next morning, grabbing my arm and pulling me to the side just as I’m about to tromp out the door with the other girls to go cut wood. I stop and scowl at her in confusion.
“Why?” I demand, and she gives me a stern look.
“Everything,” she says, stressing the word like it should be obvious. “Life has changed so much for you si
nce our trip to New York. There are zombies.” She stops and looks at me. “Zombies, Jane! Of all the crazy ways the world could have ended.” She takes a steadying breath. “I just worry about you. A month and a half ago, you were a normal teenager going to high school, now we’re fighting every day for our survival, not just from the zombies—but it’s so cold—your whole world has changed in a very short time.” She looks at me like she isn’t sure she should go on, but she does. “Sunny,” she reminds me, and the name is like a knife straight through my heart.
“Mom…,” I protest, meaning to tell her that I’m fine, but the words stick in my throat. I shrug. “I don’t think any of us are fine anymore, but it’s the way it is,” I surprise myself by saying instead. I look at her uncomfortably for a minute before working up my courage. “Are you okay?” I ask, turning the tables on her. Mom pauses, and I can tell she’s trying to be brave. Then she changes her mind and shakes her head. Maybe she thinks showing me that it’s okay to ‘feel’ will help.
Mom wipes away a tear. “I’m really not, hun, but I thank God every day that we are together. Not very many people got that kind of chance,” she tells me. It makes me feel cold inside, and I haven’t even gone outside yet. I step forward and hug her tightly, breathing in the familiar smell that is my mom. It’s kind of funny. Even without all the usual soaps and perfumes, she still smells mostly the same. I take a deep breath of it before stepping back.
“They’re waiting for me,” I tell her, and she nods.
“Of course, I didn’t mean to keep you,” she tells me, patting my cheek, and I turn and walk away. The cold hits me as soon as I step through the door. The air permeates my lungs, probably freezing them, and making me cough as I walk towards the truck.
“Jane!” I turn at my name and see Dad coming around the edge of the cabin.
“What’s going on, Dad?” I ask when he falls into step beside me. Hopefully this isn’t going to be another intervention.