How to Start Living (in the Zombie Apocalypse)

by T. L. Walker

  "I trust you." The words spilled from my mouth before I even thought about what I was saying, but the strange thing was how much I meant them. I hadn't truly trusted anyone in a long time, and I barely knew Luke – but here I was, trusting him with my life. He proved himself yesterday morning. He got the fuel to the truck and came back for us. But that wasn't entirely it, either. Somehow, he just seemed trustworthy.

  I took a deep breath and started running. Once I was within a few feet of the fence, I stopped short and shouted, "Hey fuckers, come and get me!" And then I was off again, cutting to my right, moving along the fence line at a quick jog. It was hard to ignore the survival instinct in me that screamed Run! Faster! I glanced over my shoulder and saw Luke break away from the back of the house and sprint toward the pack of zeds, moving in on them from behind with his hatchet and sledgehammer at the ready. They were closing on me, though, and faster than I expected. I picked up my pace a bit, but found myself looking back once again when I heard a noise that could only be Luke picking one of them off.

  He was swinging his sledgehammer as if it weighed nothing, and in the mere seconds that I watched him he took down three zeds. Unfortunately, the ones just in front of him had noticed the commotion and lost interest in me. I turned and began jogging backwards, even slower than before, cupping my hands around my mouth and calling out, "Over here! Weak female failing miserably at running for her life!" As I spun back around and ran a bit faster, I swear I heard Luke snort in amusement.

  You must be imagining things. Who has time to laugh when they're playing zed-killer?

  But I was approaching the end of the line. The far end of the fence had fallen over long ago, and I wasn't quite sure what to do. Luke had wanted me to run for the trees, but was that really the safest route? If I did that, and the zeds didn't stay interested in me, we could end up in one hell of a situation. I looked over my shoulder and saw that he'd cut the size of the pack in half, at least – was it possible that was enough? You know it's not. We may not have to take out every single one of them, but the more of them we disposed of, the less chance there was that they would continue drawing this many of their friends here on a nightly basis.

  I clenched my fists and did as Luke had suggested. If I remembered correctly, there was a large oak right at the tree line. My dad had once attempted to build a tree house for us in it; unfortunately, if it wasn't farm work he wasn't apt to finish things. But there was a chance there were still some boards nailed into the trunk, and that would make this particular tree easier for me to use to climb out of the reach of these things.

  And hopefully take a few out myself, on the way...after all, I couldn't let Luke have all of the fun.

  The ruins of our tree house were still there, all right – at least enough of them to give me a head start in climbing the tree. I pulled myself up and settled in on the third rung of the half-rotted makeshift ladder, keeping one hand pressed against the tree trunk, tightening my grip on the baseball bat and turning to face the zeds. A jolt of fear ran through me when I saw that even though some of them had followed me, most of them had turned their attention to Luke, and without even thinking about what I was doing I let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  Well, it would have been bloodcurdling had any of the zeds actually been composed of blood that could curdle.

  A few of the ones that had surrounded Luke turned their heads in my direction, giving him a moment of respite. I swung out with my bat and it connected with the head of the zed closest to me – but not hard enough. My grip on the tree kept me from using my full strength, and the thing merely staggered back a couple of steps before righting itself – as best it could, shuffling corpse that it was – snarling, and coming at me again. I grabbed the bat with both hands, then braced myself against the solid trunk of the tree, and this time swung with all of my lefty might.

  Yeah, I’m a lefty. And remember how I mentioned that my dad always praised my batting skills?

  I heard the crack of the zed’s skull. I hadn’t connected well enough to collapse its head, but I’d definitely broken something, because this time it didn’t just stagger backward – it collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Success. I half-turned and pulled myself up a bit higher on the tree, and when the next zed – a shorter one – got close enough, I was able to bring my bat down hard on top of its head. This time I was rewarded not only with a sickening crunch, but also with the sight of the top of the zed’s skull sinking in a good inch. As it fell it even knocked one of its followers out of the way, and that one got so confused that it seemed to forget about both Luke and me entirely as it wandered off into the woods.

  Another zed was approaching, but this time when I attempted to swing my bat my movement finally broke the rung that I was standing on. I slipped down the tree trunk, feeling it push my shirt up and scratch my back, and in my attempt to steady myself I dropped my trusty weapon. The zed was practically on top of me now, its arms stretched out and its hands grasping at my clothing. I knocked one of its arms out of the way as I reached for my knife, but with a lurch the thing was on me, knocking me off balance. I had no choice but to relinquish my grip on my knife or my position in the tree, and with a frustrated cry I fell to the ground. It wasn’t far to fall, but it knocked the air out of me nonetheless, and the zed fell with me, pinning me beneath it. I struggled against its weight, stabbing blindly with my knife until I finally felt it connect with the side of the zed’s neck.

  But it wasn’t any good – I hadn’t hit the spine or the brain, and the thing’s blackened teeth were inches from my skin. The stench was overwhelming, and though I hadn’t eaten that morning I wasn’t sure whether I was about to vomit or pass out. My vision was going black, and for a moment I thought, Mom was right. We shouldn’t have come out here.

  And then, suddenly, the weight was gone, the smell still there but nowhere near as strong. I took several deep breaths, and when my sight finally cleared I saw Luke standing over me, highlighted from behind by the sun so that I couldn’t see the expression on his face, only that his shoulders were heaving as he tried to catch his breath. "You okay?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, I think so. No bites."

  "You’re sure?"

  I nodded.

  "Good." He sounded more than a little bit relieved, and reached out his hand to help me up. I took hold of it, squeezing my eyes closed against the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm me as he pulled me to my feet so quickly. "We’ve done all we can here. We need to get back inside."

  "What about the…bodies?" I grimaced, knowing that wasn’t the proper word for these things, but still in too much shock to come up with something better.

  Luke shook his head. "For now we’re going to hope that their smell doesn’t attract more zeds. Maybe later we can burn them, but we need to get inside and get washed up. I need to make sure…" He stopped, looking away from me.

  "I wasn’t bitten!" I insisted, and then I realized that he wasn’t referring to me. "Oh. Oh, shit. Let’s go." I took hold of his hand again and pulled him toward the house, trying to ignore the fact that out of everything I’d done this morning, this – the idea of him being hurt, or worse, infected – was the only thing that truly, deeply scared me.

  Make plans. And then make backup plans. Several of them.

  *******

  Mike opened the front door for us as soon as we stepped onto the porch. "Your mom’s pretty pissed," he warned.

  "She can deal with it. We have other problems." I ushered Luke to the closest bathroom and slammed the door behind us so that no one would know what was going on – at least not yet. "Take off your clothes," I whispered. He hesitated for a moment, but when I stepped forward to do it for him he shook his head and obeyed. "Where do you think they got you?" I asked as I began running my fingers down one of his arms, turning it over in my hands, eying it carefully for any bites or scratches.

  Luke pulled away from me. "I don’t know, it definitely wasn’t a full-on bite…maybe a scratch, on the other
arm."

  Before he could protest I grabbed the offending appendage. Sprays of the red-black goo that served as zed ‘blood’ painted his skin – why hadn’t we thought to wear long sleeves? I rubbed his arm with my fingers, smearing the gore as I looked for an actual injury. "I don’t see anything," I finally told him. "Are you sure – "

  "I felt something." Luke was adamant, peering stubbornly at his arm. Finally I reached for his chin and gently forced him to look at me.

  "I’m sure you felt something, but whatever it was didn’t break the skin. You’re fine. You’ll be fine. Think about something else – tell me how many of them we took out."

  "All but a few, I think. There may be three left, four at most."

  "We did good, then."

  "Yeah…yeah, we did. But Charlie, you – "

  "I’m fine, too. I am. More than fine, in fact." I stepped toward him and tilted my head up, searching for his lips. He kissed me softly before pulling back a bit.

  "This is just the adrenaline talking," Luke murmured against my mouth.

  "So what?"

  "So, I don’t want you to want me every time you’re high from killing a zed or two."

  "Or three or four," I reminded him. "And besides, I want someone, something, and my brother and Mike certainly aren’t options."

  I knew I’d said the wrong thing even before he snorted in disgust and jerked away from me. "You’re a piece of work," he growled, pushing past me and letting himself out of the bathroom.

  A moment later Mike stuck his head in. "Are you guys okay? What happened out there? I tried to keep watch, but at one point all I could see was the zeds milling around…and then you were kind of in the trees…"

  "We took care of them. The majority of them, anyway."

  "Is Luke okay? He seemed upset. "

  "He thought he’d gotten scratched or something. By one of the zeds. But he didn’t, and then he…didn’t appreciate me teasing him about it," I lied.

  "Oh. Well…he’ll get over it." Mike smiled at me, and I felt I had no choice but to smile back.

  "So. How angry is my mom? " I had to change the subject, and this seemed like the most appropriate question at the moment.

  "About like you expected. "

  Of course. "Guess I’ll go face the music. " Nothing like having all but one person in the house mad at you. I had to assume that Joey would take Mom’s side – he hadn’t thought we needed to take care of the zeds near the house, either. And as I recalled the one who had lost interest in me so quickly, I wondered if perhaps they were right. I’d thought these things were mindless except for their desire for food – living food – but if it was that easy for them to essentially forget about meat that was just a few feet away…

  "You sure everything went okay out there?" Though he was trying to hide it, I could tell that Mike was concerned. I suppose I wasn’t surprised – I’d always been something of an open book. That may need to change. And soon.

  "Wouldn’t have said so if it hadn’t." I gave Mike a quick smile and then turned away, heading toward the kitchen. I knew I would find Mom and Joey there, but Luke was notably absent. He must have gone to wash off. You need to think about doing that soon, too. Maybe I could make some quick excuses to my mother, go find Luke, apologize to him, talk to him, tell him what I was really thinking…

  No way in hell. I would apologize for saying something crass, sure, but anything more than that would be too much. I wouldn’t be throwing myself at Luke, not for any reason. If he couldn’t deal with sex for the sake of sex, that simply wasn’t my problem.

  Or so I wanted to believe.

  "What were you thinking? You could have been bitten – you could have died!" Mom snapped as soon as I walked into the room.

  "With all due respect, if I’d been bitten, I would have died eventually."

  "Do not play semantics with me, young lady. Those things were just wandering around out there. They would have gone away eventually – they wouldn’t have had any food to keep them here."

  "What do you think we are to them, if not food? We have fuel for the generator, but we wouldn’t have been able to use it. Wouldn’t have been able to go outside to use the grill, either. Sitting in this house with the windows boarded up, being as quiet as possible – what kind of a life is that? Luke and I took our chances, and now we’ll all have a bit of a reprieve."

  "Just leave her be, Mom. You know you can’t argue with Charlie. Besides, she smells freaking awful." Joey curled his lip at me. "I’m beginning to wonder if you’re only doing this so that you can take a hot shower every day."

  "Oh, absolutely,” I sneered. “Risking my life for a hot shower really is the perfect plan, isn’t it?"

  "Just get upstairs. I’ll show Mike how to turn on the generator. Keep it short this time, though."

  I nodded. "What about Luke? He’ll need to wash up too, why didn’t you turn on the generator already? "

  Joey shrugged. "He said he was going to use cold water. Don’t know what his problem is, but he didn’t seem half as pleased as you that you guys took care of those zeds."

  "He thought one of them got him. Not sure how, or why, because I checked and he’s fine. Guess he’s still shook up about it, though. "

  "Suppose so."

  "Well, if you’ll take care of that generator, I’ll go wash this shit off me. I’ll be done in a few minutes, promise."

  "Yeah, sure." Joey clearly didn’t believe me, but I could forgive him that considering he’d stopped Mom and I from fighting. Mike was helping my brother out of his chair, though, and I wanted to escape from the kitchen before she could start in on me again.

  This time I made sure to shower as quickly as possible, not wanting them to send anyone knocking. After toweling off and pulling on some fresh clothes, I opened the door to find Holden waiting for me. He sniffed me tentatively and then wagged his tail. I bent down and scratched his head.

  "I know you don’t like the smell, boy, but you’re probably just going to have to get used to this. The day may come when I don’t have a proper shower to clean me up. Now let’s go get some food…I’m starving."

  Thankfully Mom had taken advantage of the generator being on again and was cooking something in the oven. "We’ve been out of meat since we had to eat the last of what was in the freezer, after the power went out and it thawed. But I’m baking some eggs in bell peppers, with rice and even a bit of cheese. It’s the last of that, but…I thought you could use it after this morning."

  I glanced at the kitchen table, where Joey, Luke, and Mike were all sitting. None of them would look at me, so I couldn’t be sure if any of them had something to do with my mother’s apologetic attitude – but at this point I was exhausted and just grateful to not be arguing, so I decided to take things at face value.

  "Thanks, Mom, They’ll be perfect."

  "There are some pecans on the table as well, in case you need something to tide you over until I’m done cooking. Got them from the trees just before all of this started happening." She knew that I wasn’t a big fan of pecans, but she must have realized that at this point just about any food would taste amazing. I slid into the chair next to Joey’s and grabbed a handful of nuts from the bowl.

  "Do I smell better?" I teased, leaning toward my brother and shaking my still-damp hair right near his face.

  He grimaced and wiped some water droplets from his cheek. "Yeah. Thanks for the mini shower."

  "Anytime, Joe, anytime." I looked over at Luke, who studiously avoided meeting my gaze. "You sure you don’t want to grab a hot shower while you can?" I asked him, but he still didn’t look at me; he merely shook his head ‘no’ in response. "Suit yourself." I turned back to Joey and Mike. "How’s it look outside?" The coverings had been taken down from most of the windows, but I had no desire to peer out at the zed bodies littering the field.

  "No new ones have showed up, and it looks like the few that were left have wandered off."

  "Good." I couldn’t hide my relief. "Good. Hop
efully this will buy us a little bit of time. "

  "A little bit of time? I’m certain we’ll be safe, won’t have to deal with something like that again, at least not for quite a while," Mom said cheerfully.

  I glanced at Luke a second time, but he kept his eyes on the table. I couldn’t help but roll my own eyes – I knew that he agreed with me, but it appeared that he was angry enough to refuse to back me up just now. And I was certainly too tired to deal with this on my own. "Sure thing, Mom," I hedged. I felt Joey and Mike level their gazes at me. They knew that I wasn’t being honest, but it seemed that they weren’t about to call me out or give their own opinions on the situation, regardless of whether or not they trusted that Mom was right.

  "I think I’m going to go have a quick rinse. I haven’t had a real shower in far too long. If the timer goes off, take those out of the oven and help yourselves." Mom smiled at us and left us alone. As soon as I heard her door close, I rounded on the guys.

  "Luke said we should go back to that convenience store soon, and I agree. We need to stock up while we can. The farm appears to be pretty safe for the moment, and I doubt there are many zeds still hanging around that gas station…not when they were stuck in there for days. Joey, I know you won’t be up for it, but Mike, if you’re willing you can come along." At this Luke finally looked at me, surprised and maybe a bit concerned, so I quickly continued, “Of course, you’d stay in the truck as a lookout while Luke and I went through and gathered what we could. "

  "I wouldn’t need to stay in the truck." Mike looked hurt, clearly thinking he was still being left out.

  "I’m sure you can take care of yourself, Mike, but trust me, after what happened last time we need to make sure one of us is keeping an eye on things from a safe place." It was a somewhat lame excuse, but after a moment he leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.

  "Okay. " He wasn’t happy with the idea, I knew, but he’d get over it.