Among The Dead (Book 3): Dwell In Unity

by Colley, Ryan

  Stephanie was raised primarily by her father – her parents had separated when she was just a baby. It wasn’t entirely either of their faults but Stephanie’s mother suffered from severe and crippling depression. From how Stephanie explained it, there had been multiple suicide attempts over the years. They would have long periods of happiness, only for them to be suddenly cut short by equally long periods of depression. Her father could cope with that fine by himself, but adding a child to the mix pushed things over the edge.

  Most people could cope with one major issue in their life, but adding something else to it … neither of them could cope Her mother just couldn’t handle raising a child, and her father couldn’t handle looking after her, supporting the family, and raising a child simultaneously. He wasn’t angry at her for it, but he knew the reality of the situation. It wasn’t her fault, or anyone’s for that matter. There was a mutual agreement that her father should raise Stephanie, and that is what he did. It was the best scenario for all three of them. Stephanie would have a parent, her father would be able to cope, and her mother would be able to survive. Stephanie was extremely happy with the situation, feeling like she had twice as many Christmas presents as a result of the separation.

  As a result of a fatherly upbringing, Stephanie grew to be very much a tomboy in her youth. She played a lot of sports, learned to shoot and took part in shooting competitions as well. She even grew to love video-games! A woman after my own heart. She did all the wonderful things expected of a traditional father and son relationship. She was excellent at them – fantastic in fact – and she enjoyed them too. That was until Stephanie hit her teenage years and everything changed

  CHAPTER 5

  I couldn’t sleep that night, maybe it was because I’d slept all day, but it was largely because my mind couldn’t rest. I was thinking about the moral dilemma I was facing. I’d got Thundy out of the van and sat with him to think out the decision. Did I go after Alice still, even with everything against me? I had people I needed to look after and, if Alice was with the military, she was as safe as she could possibly be. Or was she? Harrington was a military man after all. I stared at Thundy as if it spoke the concerns. He was right though, ‘military’ didn’t mean ‘safe’. Although, this group seemed to be doing their utmost to save people and get them somewhere safe. Could I live without her? No … you’ve come so far and lost so much, you need something to show for your efforts. I’d potentially lost my family and my home on the venture, although I didn’t know for certain either way. What else did I have to live for if not Alice? Besides, I needed to get Thundy back to her. You need to get back to her too.

  I had the maps spread out in front of me and was looking at our route ahead. Stephanie was right, we would never reach the next checkpoint in time. We could certainly try to catch up though! I could even make time if I started driving through the nights too. The safest place was up north – probably. I’d be heading that way regardless.

  Then, I realised it was already decided. I would head that way, and I would find Alice, but a few detours in-between would be ok. That was what I needed to do! But that didn’t sit right with me. If I was so sure it was the right decision, why was it eating me up inside? I needed to get out of my own head! I didn’t want to think any more. I needed to drive.

  I climbed into the driver’s side and started up the engine. The only person who stirred was Kirsty, who stared at me through one open eye, like a cat, before closing it again and going back to sleep – or whatever constituted as sleep nowadays. I’d head in the general direction of the checkpoint and, after stopping at points of interest along the way, I would keep going that way. Who knew what we could find? Maybe there would an awesome museum which would be free of queues? Or an arcade that was still active. I smiled to myself. Who said the apocalypse couldn’t be fun?

  Driving at night was harrowing. There was no getting around that. I had my lights on full beam and it illuminated everything. Every little facet of the wooded area we were driving through became detailed and, to be frank, terrifying. Trees took on a menacing appearance and every branch looked like an arm or limb of a person. The speed at which I was travelling, and the deep shadows … I swore I could see things moving between the trees. Everything whipped by, but I thought I’d seen faces. If it was a horror movie, I would say it was the inbred hill-folk leftover from some genetics experiment gone wrong waiting for us. They were leading us into a trap, they would fell a tree somewhere and make us get out. Then we would be picked off one by one, only to be killed and eaten – in that order if we were lucky. Except, life had become a horror film. Maybe they weren’t inbred hill-folk waiting for us, but that didn’t mean there weren’t people there. Whether it was survivors watching us and planning a trap, or the undead being drawn by the lights of our vehicle, it didn’t matter. What did matter was the chance of a very real threat being out there. I was too afraid to slow down and look … I was too afraid to keep going as well. Further down the rabbit hole.

  I needed to take my eyes off the road – turns out driving wasn’t the best thing to distract my mind. The continuous whizzing pass of objects made me tired. My eyes felt strained and they began to droop. Pre-apocalypse, I had zero experience as a driver. Post-apocalypse, I was about as experienced as I could get. I’d never pass any official examinations, but I would survive. Fear and survival was a great motivator. That being said, I knew about the dangers of driving a long journey in the dark. Not just the psychological issues of seeing things which weren’t there – our eyes can play tricks on us when faced with long periods of darkness – but because of the distractions it can cause. Or the lack of different stimulus was where the dangers were – you would spend so long staring into the darkness that objects seemed to appear from nowhere. There were no other cars, but things still seemed to zoom towards me in the dark. Things that weren’t even there. Then, almost out of nowhere, there was something there. A zombie.

  I didn’t even have time to twist the wheel to redirect the van. Most of the zombie was just out of the way of the van, but the swaying arm of the creature was not quite so lucky. The arm collided with the front of our vehicle and, in the quiet cabin of the van, it sounded like someone had fired a cannon. Stephanie screamed and jumped. Kirsty erupted from whatever semblance of sleep she was having and reached for her gun, and I heard Keith shout an obscenity. Gore spread across the front of the van and, despite everything, I couldn’t help but laugh. I had to slow down to make sure I didn’t swerve off the road and into a tree!

  “You shoulda seen your faces!” I roared with laughter, fear being replaced with mirth, and just kept going.

  “What was it?” Stephanie asked, breathing heavily and looking around terrified.

  “Nothing! Nothing at all!” I said still laughing.

  “Are you mental?” Kirsty growled.

  “Maybe!” I gasped, trying to catch my breath. They all continued to stare at me as if I’d lost it, and maybe I had. I just kept laughing. What could I say? It was hilarious. It was just a harmless scare.

  I may have seemed like I was losing it, but there was a good reason why I found it so funny. I took great, and extreme, pleasure in scaring people. Not psychologically disturbing someone, but jumping out frightening them. I was a master at it too. I didn’t mind wasting a good hour of the day on the perfect jump-scare. Most people wouldn’t understand it, but that didn’t matter.

  I always remember the instance of wanting to plan the perfect scare on my sister, Kelsey. We were on holiday and she had her own apartment. It was two rooms with only one way in through the front door. You had to pass through the first room to get to the second room, which was the bedroom. She was in the first room, and there was no way for anyone to get to her bedroom without passing her. Not for any sane and logical person anyway. While she sat in the first room, I scaled the wall and climbed through the window of her bedroom and hid inside her cupboard. I was like a goddamn ninja! It did highlight a major security flaw with the apartments
– terrifying if you think about it.

  I proceeded to wait for an entire hour in that dark and musty cupboard. No noise, no movement. I just stood there motionless, hidden behind her clothes. Just waiting for the perfect moment. Eventually, she needed to go to her cupboard, and the game had begun. The way I was stood, I could see her clearly but she couldn’t see me. A huge grin spread over my face as I prepared my move. She was staring at her clothes, trying to decide what she would wear later that day.

  As quick as lightning, I grabbed her arm through her clothes and shouted, “Whatwillyouwear!?”

  She screamed the most glorious scream. She thrashed about wildly and tried to attack the mysterious cupboard goblin. I’d petrified her. For a long time after that, whenever she went to her cupboard, she was extra careful. It was brilliant!

  With that knowledge in hand, you could probably see why I found my companions scare so funny. We lived in a world where if I were to jump out on someone, I would end up being killed in fear. If I could indirectly cause a harmless jump-scare on others, well, who could deny me that? Unfortunately, none of my passengers knew these little facts about me, so I still looked like a madman. Who could blame them?

  CHAPTER 6

  After the almost-crash, I pulled over. There was a general consensus that driving at night was too dangerous. If the zombie had hit the front of the van head-on, the engine and window could have been damaged beyond repair. If that happened, we’d be walking. If that happened, we’d probably be dead. So I slowed to an appropriate cruising speed and turned off all the lights so that we were moving in the complete darkness. None of the undead would be able to locate us by vision and only know where we had been. That was to say if there were more undead out there, which I’m sure there was.

  We rolled to a stop and I turned the engine off. I wouldn’t be keeping watch that night, I would be trying to sleep. If all went to plan, we wouldn’t be noticed by the undead. They would pass by and just ignore us – I’d seen it happen before, and the undead weren’t getting any more intelligent. We would be safe for the night.

  The others didn’t take long to drop off back to sleep. The prior disturbance was nothing in the long run of what they’d experienced. It was time for me to try and gain what did not come easily as well.

  One of the worst things, back when that was something to worry about, was being unable to sleep and having just your wandering thoughts for comfort. Even at the end of times, I still didn’t enjoy it. The quiet time where I was left alone gave the dark tendrils in the recesses of my mind a chance to start creeping into focus. I would realise all the doubts and worries that I tried to bury deep, except they were magnified tenfold and were inescapable. The unknown fate of my family started to come back to me and I was filled with worry. It wasn’t even the case of them being dead that upset me, it was the not knowing which hurt most. I knew it was my fault and, if they had died, I should have died with them. At least I could have done my best to protect them. However, that would have left another of my loved ones unaccounted for.

  My worries of finding Alice came to mind. I was searching for a needle in a haystack or, more realistically, a single person in the United Kingdom. The odds of finding her were slim. It was even slimmer that I found her alive. I would have nothing to show for my sacrifices and betrayal – I wouldn’t even be able to justify my actions if I didn’t have anything to show for it. I couldn’t let my thoughts plague my mind … I had to think about something else.

  My focus switched to all the possibilities the apocalypse held for me. Times were horrific – there was no getting away from that. However, every cloud had a silver lining. Sure, the world was full of horrors, but there was so much potential fun to be had. We lived in a world where everything was mostly the same, with the exception being a lack of rules. Not that rules were objectively bad, as a society we needed rules to maintain some form of order – whether they are moral rules or legal laws. However, if society could be trusted to live by morally defined and imposed rules – rules against what we knew was wrong instead of the ones which told us what was wrong – things could be a lot more fun. A lot more free. A lot happier. There was an entire world out there which I would never be able to explore due to legally imposed reasons in the pre-apocalypse, whether due to financial restrictions or imaginary boundaries. Man-made bureaucracy prevented me from seeing the world – my world. With the fall of the government, we were no longer people to be governed. Those restrictions no longer applied. I could go wherever I wanted, and do whatever I wanted. I wouldn’t maim and kill unnecessarily, as so many had and would continue to do, but would be guided by my moral compass.

  I felt giddy at the thought of truly experiencing the world. My mind raced with ideas and I didn’t even know where to begin. What did I want to do in the new world? There were so many places to visit! Even the most normal and boring places could be fun. I could start a new hobby. Maybe I could collect things – strange and awesome things. I could go places I’d always wanted to go! Money was no longer an issue – the only boundaries were physical ones. It was a fantastic idea and the world felt new again. Was that the way explorers felt when they discovered new continents? I couldn’t wait to check the map to see what was nearby. I thought back to my idea of a museum with no queues – a visit with full and unrestricted access sounded fun. I’d check in the morning when first light filtered in.

  I thought I nearly obtained sleep with those positive thoughts, but my mind soon twisted the positives. Sure we were free of responsibility, but that wasn’t entirely true either. We no longer had the obligation of bills and work to heed, those were gone and dead with the rest of the world, but we still had responsibility. We’d traded one type for another. I didn’t need to work so that I could keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. However, I did need to fight to survive and perform different tasks to stay warm and alive. Life was a lot more interesting than it had been. However, interesting didn’t exactly mean good. I would see different things every day, for better or worse. The world had changed with the apocalypse. Yet, it was so similar. I would get up, follow a routine to get ready for the day ahead, travel and do tasks required to stay alive, go to bed. The locations and tasks may have changed, but the reason why hadn’t. We all just wanted to survive.

  The night was fairly uneventful. Something knocked against the van in the darkness but, whatever it was, it didn’t bother us again. It could have been a branch falling on the van for all I knew. Only Kirsty and Keith stirred, but they said nothing. I only knew they’d awoken by the change of pace in their breathing. Outside of the van was so unbelievably dark and, even though I sat in the darkness for hours, my eyes never truly adjusted to take in the world outside. I was amazed at how humans ever evolved to the point they were lords and masters of their domain – especially when everything about the dark was a threat to us.

  We were never the fastest or the strongest creatures, but we sure as hell were the smartest. I suppose being aware of your own mortality would make sure you did your best to survive. Animals were lucky in that regard, they never knew their time on Earth was limited. As humans, we were cursed by it. Among my kind, I probably felt it heavier than most. From a young age, I was aware of my own mortality and it terrified me. However, with the end so much closer, it was somehow less terrifying.

  It was hard to avoid, but the van wasn’t fun to sleep in. There was no getting around that. I looked at Kirsty and Stephanie in the little light I could see by – they looked so uncomfortable. One was leaning on the other, but it did nothing to improve levels of comfort. They still sat upright, legs unable to extend. I sat rigid and staring straight out the window in front of me as well. My body was in no better a position than theirs. My muscles felt tightly wound and I knew I would be sore in the morning. Keith, our voluntary prisoner, probably had it best ironically. He could stretch out to his heart’s content but, even then, he was still on the metal bed of a van surrounded by boxes of supplies. There was little comfort in th
at. All of us would be miserable in the morning; I was sure of it.

  On top of being uncomfortable, the air was stuffy and hot. The windows were moist and had steamed up. Having four people in a van, and the nights getting warmer, was not a good idea. I couldn’t even open the window fully to let the air in, just in case something reached through in the night. I cracked the window open ever so slightly, just leaving a sliver of a gap for the air to get in. It was cool against my skin when the occasional breeze caressed me and it felt beautiful. I wished I could have more of it. Yet, I couldn’t. I was practically sucking at the gap to inhale the cool air. It would have to do. We needed to think about that for future nights. I couldn’t have another night like it.

  Eventually, after what felt like the longest night, light began to show itself, barely noticeable at first but steadily growing. I grabbed for the maps as soon as there was enough light to read by. I didn’t care about the noise and the rustling of the maps. They’d all slept for a long time and I’d had a very long night. If I woke them, so be it.

  It took me ages to locate where we were on the map with a sleep-addled brain. The wooded road we were on didn’t go much farther, and we were almost at the end of it. There were a few small towns nearby. Maybe we could stop in one of them? I was thinking of something to do in the new world. I wanted to go into abandoned houses and look around. Not mess with or take anything – unless there was something of huge value – just look at how other people lived. I’d already learned how that could go wrong. I just wanted to look at … I saw a small symbol on the map for one of the nearby towns, the legend marking it as a location of interest – something for tourists. It didn’t say what it was, but that added to the mystery of it and made me want to see it even more. I wanted to know what wonders awaited, and that was where we were going!