Zomb-Pocalypse 4

by Megan Berry

  It doesn't look like this place has ever been touched by humans. I don't know if that's true or not, but there is a ton of deadfall laying around that seems like it's been here a while, and I’m grateful I won’t have to look too hard.

  I carry my first armload of wood back. Dad has the tarp spread out on the ground and is dragging over a large log. I drop the wood and rush to give him a hand.

  He casts me a grateful look as we half-carry, half-drag the log on top of the tarp. "Thanks, Jane," Dad says, his breath puffing loudly. I nod.

  "That's not enough wood, Blondie," Silas calls over, obviously enjoying his boss role a little too much. I don't bother answering him as I trudge back into the woods. I wish I had a wheel barrow, but I guess it would be too hard to push it in the snow. Inventing a wheelbarrow on skis feels like a million dollar idea, and I can't stop daydreaming about it as I gather up my next load of wood.

  I make twelve more trips before I feel like we have enough wood. Every time I arrive back in camp with an armful, the tarp looks more and more like a shelter. It's a lean-to of sorts that kind of looks like a half-opened book with the bottom half of the tarp stretched out along the ground to keep us out of the snow. The big log I helped my dad carry over is the book’s spine in my imagination, and the other half of the tarp juts overhead at an angle like the open cover. Dad has tied it all together with two large branches going down to the ground for support and a third across the top that ties the whole thing together and adds stability.

  Silas has the moose dissected now and is sitting in a big blood spot in the snow, but I ignore it and shoot him an impressed look. "I didn't realize it would look like this," I admit.

  In true Silas fashion, he looks up briefly and grunts.

  I turn back to my dad. He shows me the way Silas instructed him to create the fire in a long row across the front of the lean-to so it keeps away animals and reflects heat back towards us.

  It's nearly dark, and I am grateful when the fire flares to life, illuminating the trees around us. It kind of feels like being in our own safe little bubble—though I'm not a total dumbass. I know nothing is truly safe.

  Silas is ready for my dad to help him string the meat up into the tree branches. I offer to help too, but they both shoo me away. So I return to the shelter and start setting out my sleeping bag and supplies.

  When I'm finished, I look over my handy work with a nod of satisfaction. It's chilly up here, so high on the mountain, but the fire helps take away the worst of the bite. I look over at Silas and my dad working hard and decide to set up their stuff as well. Silas has been bent over that moose for a couple hours now, and he must be getting stiff and sore. I know my dad is already sore from the trip up the mountain. So am I.

  I unpack my dad’s bag first and shake his sleeping bag out beside mine. Then I stare at Silas's pack and bite my lip. I'm not sure if he will care if I touch it or not. I finally decide to go for it and un-strap his sleeping bag from the string holding it to his backpack.

  I roll it out, and for a minute I can’t decide where to put it. I know Mom would want Dad in the middle, but then I look over at the side of this makeshift shelter. It’s wide open. There is no way I’m sleeping on the edge. I move Silas to the other side of my own sleeping bag. Besides, he’s kind of macho. I doubt he wants to wake up accidentally spooning my dad! Not that I do either… I make a mental note to try and fall asleep facing Silas, just in case.

  I open Silas’s bag to see if he has anything else in there that he might need, and I pull out some wet wipes. I glance over. He’s got his sleeves rolled up and smears of blood streaking up to his elbows as they tug the meat up into the tree for safety. He’s definitely going to need these.

  My finger snags on a small book, and out of curiosity I pull it out. It’s a photo album: the cheap, plastic type where each page is the size of one 4x6 photo. I glance over at Silas. I know he probably doesn’t want me to look at this, but it’s hard to resist.

  I look back and flip the cover open. My jaw drops. The first picture inside it is me!

  I recognize it right away. It’s the one I kept on my bedside table back in my old room in Pennsylvania. It was taken a few months before all this craziness happened. I’m wearing my cheerleader outfit, standing outside the convention center beaming like crazy and holding the first place trophy that my squad just won.

  Silas must have swiped this picture when I wasn’t looking, and I can’t help but smile. I didn’t even know that Silas cared back then. It’s kind of sweet and makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. Silas has been such a pain in the ass lately. He’s hurting over Sunny, and probably the entire apocalypse, and he seems to take it out on me more often than not… He never tells me how he feels. I cradle the picture in my hands; this says more than Silas ever has about the way he feels about me.

  I turn the page and see a picture of a little boy smiling up at me, and my heart drops. He looks just like a mini version of Silas. He’s even decked out in camouflage. This must be his brother that he lost. I suddenly feel too much like I’m invading Silas’s privacy. I snap the book shut and ram it back into the bottom of his bag.

  Behind me, Silas and my dad are finishing up, and I can barely slow my thundering pulse. I’m so glad Silas didn’t catch me looking through his stuff. Knowing him, he probably would’ve shut me out completely—possibly forever.

  “You getting hungry yet, Blondie?” Silas asks as he comes over carrying a handful of long, thin slices of dark red meat. “You know it’s usually tradition that the person who makes the kill gets to eat the heart,” he teases me, and I barely resist the urge to wrinkle my nose at the idea. Eating a heart sounds totally disgusting. Even these hacked-apart strips of meat don’t look all that appetizing, but gone are the days when I could eat meat from the grocery store and live in denial about where it came from. Silas ignores my face and strangely seems to be in a much better mood. Maybe it’s a man thing and he just needed to butcher something…

  “Can you reach in my jacket pocket and grab the roll of wire that’s in there?” he asks.

  I nod, stepping as close to his blood-red hands as I dare. I reach in his pocket, praying that I don’t find anything squishy in there. I pull out a small spool of snare wire. Then he instructs me on how to snip it, and I cut off a length,

  I watch him impale the meat on the wire and set up a makeshift spit over the flame—I’m pretty impressed. Silas really is a natural in the bush.

  The moose strips crackle and spit over the fire as the fat drips down into the flames, and the smell of cooking meat has my stomach rumbling despite my reservations. Silas attends to the meat like a pro, and within half an hour he’s removed the smoking meat.

  I’ve barely eaten anything all day since we’ve been busy climbing, and I hardly wait for it to cool before I’m stuffing it into my mouth.

  “This is so good,” I mumble around a mouthful.

  Silas holds out a bottle of water, and I nod my thanks. I’m kind of starting to see what draws him to this sort of thing. The meat tastes amazing after a hard day spent earning it.

  It’s not as cold as I thought it would be curled up in my sleeping bag. I’ve removed my boots but added an extra pair of thick wool socks and kept everything else on, including my winter coat, gloves, and the wool hat I took that day from the camping store. I wasn’t all that keen on removing my boots either, in case we need to make a quick get-away, but after Silas’s rousing lecture on foot fungus, I finally gave in.

  We’ve been in bed for a couple hours, and even though I’m mentally and physically exhausted— sleep has been eluding me. I stare over at the back of Silas’s head and can’t tell if he’s sleeping or not. In the firelight I can just make out the gentle rise and fall of his sleeping bag moving with each breath, but he hasn’t made a peep since we all laid down. My dad is a completely different story. I can tell that he’s unconscious to the world by the huge snores issuing from the other side of my sleeping bag. This is probably the milli
onth time I’ve been grateful that the zombies are frozen, because otherwise I’d be terrified that his snores would bring them right to us!

  As if reading my mind, my dad lets out a little snort that seems to wake him up, and I hear him rolling around in his sleeping bag. Finally, I hear him sit up and put his boots on, but I don’t turn around. I pretend to be sleeping—I don’t know why.

  Dad gets up and tosses a couple more logs onto the fire and then disappears out of sight into the forest. I crane my head to see if I can spot where he went, but I can’t. When I turn back around, Silas has rolled over and is staring at me in the firelight. I almost scream but manage to suppress it—I didn’t even hear him roll over. As usual, he’s as silent as a ninja.

  “Can’t sleep, Blondie?” he whispers, and I shake my head.

  “How did you know?” I ask.

  He shoots me a small grimace. “I’ve been listening to you fidget for the last two hours,” he tells me, and my eyes go wide. I hadn’t realized I was keeping him up.

  “Sorry,” I whisper back.

  Silas shakes it off and rolls a little closer, so close that our bodies are touching one another through our sleeping bags. He pulls off his glove and uses his bare hand to stroke some of the hair off of my face.

  “Nothing will get you out here, Jane,” he tells me earnestly, and I can’t help but smile at his display of affection. “I wouldn’t let it,” he promises, and I can’t resist stealing a kiss. I reach up and wrap my arms around Silas’s neck and pull him down towards my lips. He smells vaguely gamey, like the moose he was butchering earlier, even though he cleaned himself off as best he could—but he also smells like Silas—underneath it all.

  Our mouths meet and our kiss becomes hungry as his hands reach down to my sides and he embraces me, sleeping bag and all…

  A branch cracks somewhere close by, and Silas drags his mouth away from mine and rolls away. My dad stumbles back into the lean-to a moment later, tiredly kicking off his boots and crawling back into his sleeping bag. I lay still, my heart hammering away in my chest, trying to calm it.

  Ten minutes later, my dad’s snores fill the small lean-to again, and Silas rolls back towards me. He only plants a gentle kiss onto my cheek this time though, and then wraps his arms around me, giving me his warmth and reassurance. I roll off my back so I can snuggle right up against him, and I find the perfect resting place to burrow my face, just underneath his jaw. I press a kiss to his neck and then stifle a yawn. Silas holding me is one of the safest feelings in the world, and I can barely keep my eyes open.

  “Go to sleep,” Silas whispers in my ear, planting a kiss to my forehead. I couldn’t do anything else, even if I tried…

  A steady chopping noise slowly intrudes on my sleep, and I peel my eyes open, groaning when the dim, grey light of morning actually hurts my eyes. My vision is still a little blurry, but I can see that Silas’s sleeping bag is not only empty, it’s completely gone. It’s like he was never here, even though he spent the entire night holding me in his arms. I slept like a baby.

  I roll over and see my dad just starting to wake up too. “What in the unholy hell is that noise?” he mumbles as he reaches for his boots. My entire body screams at me as I reach for my own boots, and I groan again. At almost at the exact same time, my dad’s own painful grunt hits my ears.

  “Sore muscles?” I ask, and he nods, looking like the effort to even nod is hurting his entire body.

  “Good morning!” Silas chooses this exact moment to call out cheerfully.

  Dad and I exchange a bitter look—I’m sure we are both imagining his death in this moment.

  “What’s so good about it?” I demand grumpily, making Silas chuckle from somewhere to my left. I still haven’t been able to locate him, but I’m too tired to care right this second. I get my boots on first and then stand, my entire body giving a loud, miserable pop.

  My dad is also trying to stand, and I rush over to give him a hand up. His struggles strain my back even worse, but finally we are both up.

  “I put a granola bar on that log over there for you,” Silas calls, and I locate the log. It feels way too early to eat, but my stomach has other ideas and growls noisily.

  I go and relieve myself in the woods, cursing the woods, snow, zombies, moose, sore muscles and Silas all at once. I am not a girl that was made to pee outside, squatting down in the snow, which I know is ridiculous given our circumstances, but I can’t help but hate it. Even back at the cabin, since the plumbing froze up, we’ve still been keeping it semi-civilized. Ryan, Regg, and my dad built an outhouse using the equipment we commandeered—which is still better than this because it has four walls and a toilet seat!

  I stalk back into the middle of camp, snatch my granola bar off the log, and grumpily sit down to eat it. “Somebody isn’t a morning person,” Silas teases, which he knows is ridiculous because I totally am, but these are not ideal circumstances. My entire body feels like one big sore gob of skin, and we still have to hike back down a mountain!

  Silas presses a small tin cup full of hot coffee into my hand, which he’s percolated over the fire in a beat-up metal pot. I don’t usually drink coffee, but it’s hot and I’m cold so I gulp the bitter brew down. My friends and I used to go to the mall and drink fancy coffee drinks, vanilla cappuccino’s and icy drinks that were delicious and more sugar than caffeine. This is nothing like that. This coffee could probably peel paint off the side of a house and is probably doing similar things to my intestines. I drink down every drop, spitting out a few coffee grounds as I go, and then I tear into my granola bar, sitting down and looking towards what Silas is doing for the first time.

  He’s made some sort of weird stick thing. “What is that?” I ask him around a mouthful of apple crumble and oats, and his chest puffs up with pride.

  “It’s a travois,” he tells me, and I examine the two long, thin poles that he’s joined at a strange angle using rope.

  “What does it do?” I ask, and Silas frowns when I fail to look appropriately impressed.

  “It’s a sled—this is how we’re going to drag the meat home,” Silas explains.

  I stare at the two thin branches and frown. I’m not really sure how he’s going to haul anything with it.

  Like he can read my mind, Silas frowns. “We’re going to use the tarp. I was just waiting for you two sleepyheads to get up.” I squint at the dark gray sky, still streaked with black and just the first few shots of bright pink and orange, and I frown. The moon is still out for crying out loud. It can’t be any later than dawn.

  “We’re up now,” I grumble as I get up and go back to the lean-to and start rolling up my sleeping bag. Then, because I’m feeling generous, I roll up my dad’s too and tie it back onto his pack before throwing both our packs out into the snow.

  Dad is sitting stiffly on a stump, drinking his third cup of coffee, so I pitch in and help Silas take down the shelter. I feel bad for the old guy. If I feel this bad at seventeen, I can’t even imagine how he feels at forty-two.

  When we’ve gotten everything packed back up, Silas folds the tarp so it creates a bottom on the travois. Then he cuts down the meat and stacks it while I throw snow on the already dwindling fire.

  “Ready to go, Art?” Silas asks my dad.

  For a moment, I’m worried we’re going to have to throw my dad on Silas’s travois too. But after a minute he nods and gets up stiffly.

  “You’ll start to feel better once we get walking,” Silas tells us, and I have to resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him.

  Of course, Silas is right. At first my muscles complain loudly, especially as I help pull the heavy travois loaded up with moose meat, but after an hour or so they seem to warm up and don’t hurt as badly.

  It’s a little trickier climbing down than it was going up. The travois is heavy and bulky and takes all three of us to pull it, and there are a couple spots that are a little dicey. Silas has to stop and secure the meat with more rope so it won’t slide off on
the steeper hills. Dad and I have to help push rather than pull a few times, but finally the landscape starts to level out a bit, and eventually I recognize the clearing where I always chop wood.

  I blink in excitement as I recognize the woodchips littering the snow and the tire tracks. “We’re home already?” I ask, shocked at how quickly the trip went.

  “It’s always faster coming down than going up,” Silas tells me, and I impulsively walk over to hug him. He drops the poles and hugs me back until my dad clears his throat.

  “Your mom will be worried about us,” he reminds me, and I nod, stepping away from Silas with an extra spring in my step. We’re just about home. It’s kind of weird how quickly the cabin has become home.

  Mom must’ve been watching out the window because she comes running out as soon as we’re in sight, not even wearing a coat or gloves. I expect her to run up and hug me, but she doesn’t. She stops a good fifteen feet away from us, and I frown in confusion. She doesn’t look right.

  “Don’t come in the cabin,” she warns us, and the tone of her voice makes me scared.

  “What’s going on, Mere?” Dad asks, his voice sharp with worry, and I watch my Mom’s shoulders sag.

  “Regg, Ryan, and Abby are sick. I don’t want you guys to catch it,” she tells me, and I frown.

  “What—?” I start to ask, but I’m cut off by the hoarse, hacking coughs that wrack my Mom’s body. She coughs so hard that she nearly collapses in the snow. Dad starts towards her, but she holds her hand up to ward him off.

  “Don’t, Art. It’s bad,” she warns him, but he doesn’t listen. He pulls his own coat off and wraps it around my mom’s thin shoulders. “Jane…” she starts to protest, but my dad doesn’t listen. He scoops her up in his arms and then motions for us to follow him inside.

  Mom starts to buck in his arms. “No!” she yells at him, struggling to get down. “Not Jane,” she mumbles. “Not our Janey…”