by T. L. Walker
Mike was silent as we put up the rest of the plywood on the main floor of the house, working in tandem on the back windows while Luke and Mom fixed up the front ones. When we were finished, though, he stood staring at the last boarded-up window for a moment, and then asked, "Do you think we're really safe here?"
"For right now? Maybe. But forever, well...unless this turns out to be some fluke incident, not some country- or world-wide problem...I doubt it."
"You guys all set?" Apparently Luke had approached us from behind without my noticing; I nearly jumped out of my own skin at the sound of his voice.
"Yeah, we're done," Mike replied.
"Good. We should probably gather in one place and try to keep quiet. I'd say we could read or play a game, but...well, not much light left for that, I guess." Luke grimaced, and I found myself staring at him. There was something in his tone that worried me, something I couldn't quite place, but I knew better than to ask him about it just now. I had a feeling that anything he said would only upset the others, which was why he kept it to himself.
The problem was that I wanted to prove to him that I was strong enough to be his confidante. That I wasn't lying to myself about how bad things probably were, about how safe we would be if we stayed in one place for too long.
My chance came after we'd made sure the others were settled in the living room and Luke insisted on checking out the perimeter. "I'll help you with the window coverings," I offered. "Extra pair of hands, keep things steady, less movement and all of that..."
He hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. "Alright." I could tell that he was reluctant to allow me to tag along, but perhaps he felt it would look worse for him to refuse my assistance. Regardless, he turned his back on me and walked away, leaving me no choice but to simply follow in his wake. Even when we approached the kitchen window, he merely gestured for my help and avoided looking at me at all. "I'll hold it, you look.”
I stepped up to the window and peered through the small crack. Without counting I could only guess that there were well over a dozen dead people wandering around the field behind the house. It appeared that they couldn't figure out the fence, as they just kept bumping into it, backing off, and then rushing forward only to run into it again.
"Well?" Luke pressed.
"They're at the fence. Can't seem to get past it. Unless these ones don't go away and their numbers really start racking up, we should be okay."
He let out his breath. "Good."
"Yeah. Good." I stepped back and waited for him to replace the boards, but when he turned around and made to walk away I stopped him. "Luke."
The look on his face was, more than anything else, resigned. "Charlie."
"You know this can't last forever. Us being here, I mean, and it being safe."
"I do, yeah, though I'm surprised you understand that as well."
I rolled my eyes. "I'll ignore that comment. Regardless, doesn't that mean that we should...I don't know...come up with a backup plan? And maybe a backup plan to our backup plan? I mean...what if these things never die...again? What if, no matter what, you become one of them? They’ll just keep multiplying, and there will never be enough of the living to take all of them out, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives fighting them..."
"Has it ever occurred to you that you may have an overactive imagination?"
"Trust me, I hope that's all this is. But if it's not..."
"Yeah. But if it's not." He sighed. "We need to get back to the others."
"But we'll continue this conversation later?" I pushed.
Luke furrowed his brow. "I suppose so. If you insist."
"Oh, I insist. You're not going to get rid of me that easily." I turned and started to walk away, then looked back to see him watching me thoughtfully. "Better come up with some ideas of where we could go, in case we need to leave at a moment's notice." That's what I'll be doing. Of course, maybe Luke would think about that...and then maybe he would think about what a burden Joey and Mom and Mike – and yes, even I – could be. If I were him, I'd certainly consider a quiet disappearance.
But you're not him, I reminded myself, and yet, you’ve already thought about that.
Make your getaways quiet; make sure you’re never followed.
Chapter 4
Staying Alive
After eating a half-cooked meal that had also long gone cold, and then sitting around for several hours – sometimes in silence and sometimes talking quietly – we finally decided that it would be safest for us to all sleep in the same place. Luke and I had checked outside every half hour or so until the sun set and it was too dark to see. The number of zombies was growing, albeit very slowly...the problem was that none of them were wandering away, and several more appeared throughout the afternoon and evening.
When we finally decided to give up watch and try to get some sleep, the five of us gathered in Mom's bedroom on the main floor of the house, pulling out all of the old sleeping bags and blankets and pillows that we could find so that the guys would be comfortable. It had been a while since I'd been so happy to be a girl, because just now it meant that I got to sleep in the bed with my mother. Holden certainly didn't mind it either; he curled up between us, letting out a huff of breath, and soon he was snoring softly the way he always did after a long and tiring (or stressful) day.
I lay there in the bed that my parents had once shared, listening for the steady breathing that would tell me the others were asleep, but eventually it was obvious that none of us would be getting much of that tonight. "We should call them something. The zombies," I clarified.
Silence.
"Cannibals?" I suggested.
Joey snorted. "I think that implies that they're alive...that they know what they’re doing."
"The military phonetic alphabet uses 'Zulu' for the letter 'z'." Of course it's Luke who comes up with that.
"Zulus? Ugh, no. Is that really the word they use now?"
"Well, yeah."
"It's a good idea, but I agree with Charlie, Zulu isn’t a good name for them." I was surprised to hear Mom speak up. "Didn't they used to use 'zed'?"
"How very European," I joked.
"Zeds? I like it." It was Mike who agreed with her. I was surprised, but what did I know? Maybe he'd bonded with my mother while Joey and Luke and I were out playing “capture the supplies” against a team of undead.
"That's a much older call word, but hey, if this situation will do anything, it’ll force society to take several steps back,” Luke observed. Is he just trying to make friends, all of a sudden?
"Okay then, 'zeds' it is." Why not? I didn't much care; I was just hoping that if we talked long enough, some of us would fall asleep.
There was a long pause before Mike spoke up again. "You don't think...that they could be people again, do you?" It was a child's question, and there was a need in it that would have made my heart ache had I not been forced to kill one of the things mere hours before.
"No, Mike. I don't. And I don't think you'd want them to. Shit, if they knew what was going on, they probably wouldn't want to, either."
"Language, Charlie."
"Sorry, Mom." I was glad that she couldn't see me roll my eyes.
"It's okay, Cheryl." It was strange hearing a boy Mike's age calling my mother by her first name. "She's right. I just thought...my family..."
"What happened, son?" Mom asked, her voice soft.
It was several long moments before Mike replied. "I think it hit the bad areas of the city first. We didn't even know what was going on until it was practically at our doorstep. My mom wanted to get out, but my dad refused to leave. He thought we could hold out...and then my baby sister got attacked. It was just a couple bites and scratches...we thought if we cleaned her up, gave her medicine...but she died right there in her bed, and when she came back, she went after my mom. And when my dad and my little brother and me came home later that day, she came after us. Dad held her off and my little brother and I got away...we'd heard that there
was a shelter set up at the YMCA, but by the time we got there it was..." He paused and took a shuddering breath. "I lost him there. I wandered around the outskirts of the city for two days before Charlie found me."
I hadn't asked Mike about his family because I'd assumed he hadn't wanted to be asked, hadn't wanted to talk about it, when maybe he needed to talk about it...only now that he had, I didn’t know what to say. Joey had always been the more comforting of the two of us, and I was more than a little grateful when my brother spoke up. "Your family doesn't have to worry now. About surviving. About being cold, hungry, thirsty...when you think of them, try to remember that. Only that."
The problem was that Mike thought he was safe here, when that wasn’t really the case. I could discuss the situation with Luke all I wanted, but what about the others? Would they leave when the time came, or would we be forced to wait until it was too late?
It was quiet again, and in the silence we heard them. "I wish they wouldn't - " I stopped myself. My voice sounded small and scared, and I hated the idea that I could be vulnerable like that.
"They're much louder tonight," Mom murmured.
"There are more of them nearby than usual," Luke explained. "A lot more."
"If they don't go away, we'll have to take care of them tomorrow." My stomach turned at the very idea, but was it in disgust or because I was – God forbid, thrilled – at the thought of doing so?
"You will do nothing of the sort. Look at what happened today!"
"That was different, Mom. We didn't know they would escape that store. We weren't expecting..." I paused and shook my head. "Anyway. If we go out and take care of some of them tomorrow, we'll have a plan before doing so. And if we can pare down their numbers, we'll be safe here for a little longer. If we can't, or don't, and they keep coming, they'll break through that fence any day. They may not be able to see us, or hear us, but we don't know what their sense of smell is like. We don't really know how much intelligence they have. We just can't chance it." I thought of the zed that had grabbed hold of my hair in the city. Had it gotten hold of me by chance, or had it known what it was doing? We simply didn’t understand them well enough to be certain either way.
As I'd predicted, none of us got much sleep that night. The moans of the zeds rose and fell, and every rustle of movement put me on edge. But at least I used my time wisely, considering the types of places where we would be safest and trying to recall their proximity to the farm. And then there were the tasks I’d need to work on immediately – packing up some non-perishables, along with at least a couple sets of clothes for everyone. Maybe I was just being my usual glass-half-empty self, but someone had to make sure that we were ready to leave at a moment's notice. If the zeds didn't come calling, soon enough we had to expect that other people would show up – and if they did, and they happened to be more numerous and better armed than us, there was no way some simple wooden fences and plywood over the windows would hold them off.
When the gray light of dawn began filtering through the window coverings in my mother’s bedroom, I finally allowed myself to get out of bed. She and Joey had fallen asleep at some point, but when I stood up and headed for the door I saw that Luke and Mike were also awake.
"Morning," I mouthed. Leaving off the 'good' seemed an obvious choice – what kind of 'good' was there in a morning that would begin with me doing what was essentially a perimeter check, followed by planning an attack on the undead that had wandered onto the farm throughout the night?
Mike nodded, rubbing his eyes, and Luke grimaced as he stood up. Our movements woke Holden up as well, and he jumped down off the bed, padding after me as I headed into the kitchen. I was starving, and thirsty, but I knew that getting a quick look outside and assessing our situation had to be first priority.
"You ready?" Luke had come up behind me without my noticing – again. I stood in front of the boarded-up kitchen window, refusing to turn and face him.
"As ready as I'll ever be." I reached up and undid the makeshift latches that held the plywood in place, and Luke took hold of the board, pulling it back just enough for me to get a glimpse of the outside world.
There were definitely far more zeds roaming around the field than there had been yesterday, but I knew that as long as we made our move soon, it was still a manageable number. I hadn't even realized that I was holding my breath until I let it all out in one long sigh, stepping back from the window so that Luke could replace the covering.
"How is it?"
"We need to take care of it soon, but I think we can take care of it, at least."
He nodded brusquely. "You sure you're okay with getting up close and personal with these things...again?"
"As I don't have a choice, I guess I'll just say, 'Sure!' and hope that you believe me." I forced a smile.
"There's always a choice, Charlie."
"Is there? Even now?"
Luke shrugged. "I can take care of things out there."
"And I can stay inside and...what? Cook? Clean? Do some other womanly thing?" I snorted in derision. "I don't think so."
"That's not what I meant. It's just...the best way to ensure survival is to not needlessly endanger yourself."
"Yeah, well, I don't want to just survive. I want to live." I spun on my heel and marched to the dining room table. "Now let's figure out a plan for getting rid of those zeds." Luke stepped up beside me to mull over the weapons that were spread out in front of us.
"One of us needs to create some sort of diversion, I think." He pinched his jaw between thumb and forefinger, his eyebrows drawn together as he mused over our best course of action.
It took everything in me to not reach up and brush his hair out of his eyes. "I run a lot. My guess is that I'm faster and you're stronger, so I'm probably the better...diversion." I had to turn away from him, unable to hide the smirk that came unbidden to my lips.
"Yes, I suppose you would be." Luke's tone was dry.
"Oh, lighten up." I gave him a light punch in the shoulder. "I'm about to become zed bait, and you the hunter! There's no way anything can go wrong."
The way he looked at me then...I swear, it literally made my heart flutter. I sure as hell don't think Dave had ever looked at me like that, with this crazy mixture of amusement and respect and concern…and something else that I couldn't quite place.
But then Luke looked back down at the table and frowned thoughtfully, and I told myself that it didn't much matter how he looked at me – not now when we had such a difficult morning ahead of us, at least. "Think we should do this now, before Cheryl or Joey has time to protest?" he finally asked.
"That's probably not a bad idea." I chewed on my lip for a moment. Part of me didn't want to essentially go behind Mom and Joey's backs, but I was also exhausted and in no mood to argue with them. Besides, Mike could always keep an eye on us from the house and raise them if things took a turn for the worse.
Speaking of Mike, he chose that moment to step forward. He was obviously nervous and uncomfortable. "Are you guys really going to do this?"
"We need to," I shrugged. "Or, well, someone needs to, and it just so happens that Luke and I are, at the moment, the most qualified. But you can help out, too. Is that okay?”
Suddenly Mike’s nervous and uncomfortable attitude turned into one that was curious and excited. "Yeah, of course, anything!"
"We'll remove the coverings from those windows over there so that you can watch out for us. If it looks like we can't handle the situation, get Mom and Joey. They'll know what to do, and they'll need you to help them, as well. Basically, you're a really, really important lookout."
I couldn’t tell if Mike was disappointed or relieved when he asked, "You sure you don't need me outside?"
"I think two of us risking our lives like this is quite enough." I winked at him. "Besides, I'm used to incurring the wrath of my mother...it's not something you want to experience, trust me."
"I think it's about that time, Charlie. Choose your poison." Luke alrea
dy had the hatchet and sledgehammer in hand, as well as a holster and gun strapped around his hips. I followed his lead with one of the smaller handguns, then grabbed the both my baseball bat and the same knife I'd used to kill the zed the day before.
"Trusty sidekick, here," I grinned, patting the knife. My heart was slamming in my chest, my hands trembling slightly, but I didn't feel fearful.
Okay, maybe I was a little bit scared, but mostly I was filled with something like anticipation.
"We should leave through the front. Mike, make sure you lock the door behind us. We'll go down the hill on this side of the house – we need to surprise them, only let them know we're there when we want them to know." Luke sounded self-assured, but when I looked at him I saw that his jaw was clenched, his lips thin, his eyes a bit wider than they usually were. He was tense and alert, but like me he didn't seem overly frightened. Something about that gave me strength.
"I'll follow your lead."
Luke nodded, but he still wouldn’t look at me. I pursed my lips to keep myself from saying anything. We let ourselves out the front door and waited until we heard the locks click in place on the other side before creeping off the porch and around the corner of the house. Luke kept close to the wall, and when he reached the corner he stopped to peer around it. It was several hundred yards to the fence, and just beyond that I saw the zeds. There were at least a few dozen of them now, milling around much like the animals we’d once kept in the fields.
"Stay on this side of the fence. Run down the line to the right, away from the house." Luke squinted at the tree line in the distance. "How well can you climb?"
"Not very well," I admitted. "But if I remember correctly, there are some trees in there with low-hanging branches. I can probably get far enough up into one of them to at least be just out of reach."
"Good. We need to move." I followed Luke's gaze and saw that several of the zeds who were closer to us seemed to have noticed a change in the air. Maybe they smelled us, or perhaps they could hear us talking, even though our voices were barely above a whisper. "I'll be right behind you," he promised.