How to Start Living (in the Zombie Apocalypse)

by T. L. Walker

  I sat down on the edge of my bed and heaved a sigh, looking around my dimly lit room and for some reason recalling that cliché about not being able to go home again. The crazy thing was, I'd done so, and the only reason I was leaving was because I had no other choice

  "How's the packing going?" I looked up to see Luke standing in the doorway.

  "Very funny. I've done some. I was just...thinking."

  "About your mom?"

  "Sort of, yeah. And about the farm."

  "Not changing your mind, are you?"

  "You know I'm not. I guess...well, strangely enough, when I was growing up I always wanted to leave this place. And I did, as soon as I could, and only came back to it when I had to. But now...well, as much as I know that we need to leave, that doesn't make me want to do so."

  "Understandable. We had a good thing going here, for a while." He stepped into the room and sat down beside me. I could tell that he wanted to wrap his arm around me, but he didn't – he'd learned my moods, and knew that I wouldn't care to be cuddled right now. Instead we just sat there in silence for several minutes, his arm pressed gently against mine.

  Finally I heaved a sigh and stood up. "Guess we better finish packing up while we still have some light."

  It was a restless evening to say the least, and when we did finally go to bed Luke and I both tossed and turned for most of the night. As the first gray light of dawn began to seep through the cracks of the window coverings, we dragged ourselves out of bed, exhausted, and began loading our things into the two cars we'd chosen – mine, of course, and the truck as well. The water run was the last thing we needed to do before getting on the road, because of course we wanted to make sure that we had enough water to take with us, as well as leaving some for Mom. Don't think about what she'll do when it's gone. She's in good health. She knows how to use a gun.

  The sun had broken the horizon by the time Luke, Daniel, and I snuck out the back door and made our way down to the spring. We stumbled across a couple zeds along the way, but nothing that the three of us couldn't handle together. I ran offense and Luke brought up the rear, with Daniel between us carrying the majority of the water jugs. It wouldn't be quite so easy on the way back, when any noise we'd made had time to attract more zeds and when we were all loaded down with our water burdens – we'd learned that the hard way these past weeks, as more than one of us had experienced a close call. Or, as in my case, upwards of a dozen close calls.

  "Nine," I heard Luke hiss from behind. I passed my bat from my right hand to my left and then spun to that side, giving myself a moment of windup before swinging as hard as I could, the satisfying crack echoing through the woods as I connected with the zed that was rushing toward me.

  "They'll have heard that," Daniel mused. I nodded and picked up the pace to a jog. How quiet we’d been up until then was our only real cover; that near-silence was broken now, and the faster we did this, the better.

  Not that we could really tell the natural springs to hurry up. I watched one direction, Luke the other, while Daniel filled each jug to the brim. A couple zeds came stumbling up the path we'd used, and each time Luke or I ran up to meet them, hoping to keep them at bay. In the past this had worked much better, of course – nowadays it was as if they remembered having heard us, and they just kept coming. Fuckers.

  "One last stressful trip to the old watering hole before we go," I grunted as I picked up one of the jugs. The guys gathered up the rest, and after I took a moment to switch my baseball bat for my hunting knife, we slowly made our way back to the house.

  We'd made it less than a few hundred yards before the first attack came. They approached from behind this time, and with the noise that we ourselves were making none of us heard them until they were practically on top of us. You see, it's a funny thing, the way zeds run – now that they do run, that is. They still shuffle, sort of. And you know, they're still essentially brain-dead, so they don't care how they look or how clumsy they actually are. (Which, while not as clumsy as they used to be, is still way more than us.) It makes for a pretty funny picture, when I think about it...but at that moment, however amusing the zeds looked as I turned and saw them launch themselves at Luke, I sure as hell wasn't laughing.

  Take joy in the little things while you still can.

  Chapter 6

  Runaways

  Luke shouted, dropping the jug that he was carrying. I cringed as it burst open, but that was all of the attention I could afford for some water when one of the few people in the world who I'd ever truly cared about was obviously in danger. I bent low to set my own jug on the ground as I rushed toward Luke. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the jug topple over, cap still on – a brief moment of respite as I brandished my knife, yelling as loud as I could, wanting to distract the zeds even though all the while I knew that it wasn't three months ago and that none of this would work.

  Luke was struggling with one of them now, having not been able to get his hatchet in hand fast enough. I was at his side then, the blade of my knife flashing in the tree-filtered sunlight as I stabbed at each of the attackers in turn, picking them off one by one. And then Luke was in control of his own weapon, and the head of his hatchet was buried in the zed's skull.

  Gasping for breath, my heart pounding, I clutched at Luke's shoulders and made him look at me. "Are you okay? Did it - "

  Wordlessly, he held up his right hand.

  His pointer and ring fingers ended at the knuckles, blood gushing from where the zed had bitten them off.

  "No," I whispered. Then, louder, "No. What the fuck, no, no, no - "

  "Shut up, Charlie. Get me my hatchet."

  I could hardly bear to let go of Luke, and I was shaking so much that when I did obey him, it took several attempts for me to pull the hatchet from the zed's head. When I was finally able to retrieve it, he calmly told me to wash it with the rest of his water and then bring it to him. I made sure that it was as clean as possible, wiping it off on my shirt and then rinsing it again before holding it out to him. But he shook his head, reached up and tore off one sleeve of his shirt, and then spread his hand on the half-rotted log next to him.

  "Take them off."

  "I – what? No, Luke, I can't – “

  He gritted his teeth. "Take them off, Charlie. Now. The longer we wait..." His voice trailed off, and I knew what he was thinking. That this was a shot in the dark anyway, and if we didn't do it soon there was probably no way at all that it would work.

  I raised the hatchet, took aim, and brought it down as hard as I could. Luke screamed in pain, maybe louder than I’d ever heard anyone scream in person, and yeah, I'm ashamed to admit that my first thought was about how many zeds all of this noise would attract.

  "Wrap it up. Tight," he said weakly. I turned and saw Daniel staring at us, his face white with fear.

  "Keep watch," I hissed before turning back to Luke and tying the piece of his shirt around the stumps where his fingers had been. He clenched his jaw, breathing hard through his nose, but when I was done he sucked in one more breath and blinked slowly.

  "Help me up."

  Again I obeyed, though immediately this time, and when he was on his feet and leaning against me Luke said, "Let's go. Quickly as possible."

  Somehow we made it back to the house without another incident, despite – or perhaps because of? – me alternately cursing at and praying to God the entire way. Once there, our immediate departure for the city was forgotten as Mom rushed to find the few medical supplies we had left. Once the hydrogen peroxide and gauze were located, though, I had to turn away. I'd done my duty – more than my duty – and I'd never been one for vast amounts of blood and gore anyway. The zeds were different. There was no lifeblood that flowed from them when they were shot or hacked or stabbed. Killing them was like running over someone in Grand Theft Auto; it was a game to me, and they didn’t matter.

  Luke was resting comfortably by noon, but only after insisting that we leave at first light the next day. Mom even agre
ed with him, noting that now we had two people in the house who were in dire need of proper medical care. The rest of the day was spent in awkward silence, and when I tried to crawl into bed with Luke that night he pushed me away.

  "Get out of here, and barricade me in. I don't know what will happen, if what we did will work, how fast I’ll...change...if it doesn't." His eyes were clouded with pain, but otherwise he seemed lucid. As much as I didn't want to leave him, I couldn't stand how worried he sounded. In that moment I would have done just about anything to give him peace of mind.

  There was no water run the next morning, that's for damn sure. Our goodbyes were faster than I'd thought they'd be, and somehow more somber as well. Luke had survived the night, but he was already running a low fever, and so it fell to me to drive him and Mike in my car while Joey took Daniel, Lauren, and Mabel in the truck. I held back tears when I asked my mom one more time if she would come with us, but she just shook her head and gave me a sad smile.

  "You come back and check on me sometime, if you can. But for now, get those boys of ours some help."

  And then we were gone, up the driveway and down the road, speeding toward the city with all thought of driving safely forgotten. When we passed by the wreck that I’d almost crashed into on mine and Mike’s journey to the farm, I noted that some of the cars were gone, and wondered what had been in the eighteen wheeler and whether anyone had broken into it to see. I hadn't thought about it when we’d passed by that first time, and now we clearly didn't have a moment to lose, not for a truck that had probably long since been emptied of anything valuable. Mike had tied an old scarf around his face, but he was coughing incessantly; when I glanced at Luke in the passenger seat, his face was pale, his eyes closed. The hospital was only another half hour drive, maybe a little longer if we ran into any snags...I reached over and rested my hand against Luke's cheek – he was burning up, now, but was that just because he was weak, or because his injury was infected, or because he was on his way to –

  No. Don't think about that. We caught it, he just needs proper treatment and he'll be fine.

  I took the long way around the city and approached the hospital from the southwest. It was strange to drive down what had been a major road and see that the traffic lights were dead, most of the parking lots empty, and not a single car was driving by. I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw Joey hunched over the steering wheel of the truck, following me far too closely for comfort.

  "Are you sure this is a good idea?" Mike mumbled. I met his eyes in the mirror, noted that Holden was stretched out across the backseat with his head in Mike’s lap, then refocused on the road in front of me.

  "I don't know," I admitted, "but we really don't have much of a choice. Not now, with..." I stopped myself from saying his name, but Luke knew I was talking about him. He opened his eyes and turned toward me, giving me a small smile.

  "You don't have to talk about me like I'm not here. My hand hurts like hell, but I'm not dead."

  I tried to ignore the fact that he didn't say he wasn't dying, just that he wasn't dead. "I just thought you were sleeping."

  "Nah...too much pain."

  "I've got some of those Lortabs..."

  "Thanks, but no thanks. I want to be lucid in case..."

  In case we get to the hospital and find help. In case we get there and don't find help. In case it's a wash and we have to figure out another option. There were too many different scenarios to count running through my head, so I merely nodded in response.

  Soon enough the hospital was looming just in front of us and to the left, and I could tell as we approached that this hadn't been one of our better ideas. Cars were parked haphazardly on the sides of the road now, in the lawn at the front of the building, all over the parking lot...many of them were blocking each other in, and some of them had clearly tried to ram their way out of the lot. The hospital itself was dark, most of its lower windows smashed in, the doors open wide to the elements – and to the zeds. Surprisingly, I didn't see any of those wandering around – perhaps they knew that this place was dead, useless – but I was fairly certain there were still some stuck inside. Even super zeds couldn’t figure out how to get out of the maze that was a large hospital, right? And in that case, could we – or maybe, rather, would we – chance going in to look for medication?

  "Doesn’t look good," I sighed.

  Luke chuckled weakly. "I’m not sure I’m surprised."

  "Joey and Daniel and I can go in and poke around…"

  "I don’t think that’s safe." Mike pointed to one of the windows on a higher floor. It was intact, but as the sunlight glinted off it I saw movement – something throwing itself against the window. It had to be a zed that had heard our cars. "Those things have probably been trapped in there the entire time. They’ll be – " He stopped, breaking into a fit of coughing.

  "Yeah." I knew what they would be – hungry, maybe weaker for that, but possibly more dangerous for it, as well. "But we need to try…"

  "No, we don’t." Luke was firm. "Rather, you don’t. You’ve done enough for all of us, Charlie, as have Joey and Daniel. We should find another place. The closest school, maybe…"

  "That’ll be the high school," Mike said. I nodded, rolled down my window and gestured for Joey to pull up next to us. He did, and Daniel rolled down the passenger side window of the truck.

  "We’re going to try the high school." I jerked my chin at the hospital. "There are zeds in there, probably a lot of them, and all it would take is one of us opening the wrong door…"

  "Don’t have to tell me twice," Joey grimaced. "Lead the way."

  The high school was even closer to the city center than the hospital had been, and it wasn’t long before the roads became impossible to navigate. We were able to get within a mile or so of the school, but I knew that it would be up to me and either Joey or Daniel to walk the rest of the way and check things out. As much as I didn’t care for the idea of doing a run with just one other person as backup, we certainly couldn’t leave Lauren and Mabel alone with Mike and Luke in their current states. Lauren could fend for herself, of course, but asking her to protect them as well as her own child was a request I simply couldn’t make.

  I pulled my car over and Joey followed suit. By the time he and Daniel had climbed down out of the truck, I had my knife and gun tucked into my belt and my baseball bat in hand.

  "No offense, Joey, but I’m taking Daniel on this one. Someone needs to stay with Lauren and Mabel and the guys, and Daniel is a better shot than you. I’ll leave Holden here as well, though."

  Joey shrugged. "You’re not hurting my feelings. I know I’m better with this than with a gun." He patted the hatchet that was strapped around his waist.

  "Yeah, your aim is shit, but you’ve got more upper body strength than anyone but Luke." With this, I glanced into my car. "I won’t ask you guys to sit in such a confined space with them, but you may want to stay outside and really keep an eye on things. Hopefully…" I stopped myself and shook my head.

  "We’ll be fine." Joey reached out and squeezed my shoulder. "If it comes down to it, Lauren – and Mike and Luke – will fight if they truly need to. You just figure out if we can get what we need from the school and then get your ass back here."

  For a moment I actually thought about giving my brother a hug. I’d never been one for displays of affection, though, and in the end my ingrained nature won out. "Will do," I nodded, turning away from Joey’s touch. "Come on, Daniel." The young man’s face was set in grim determination – he opened the truck door and said a quick goodbye to his family, then came back to my side.

  "Lead the way."

  We moved quickly, half-running up the road, darting around the cars that had been abandoned in front yards, on sidewalks, and helter-skelter all over the street.

  "Damn," Daniel muttered. "What happened here? Why didn’t these people just keep going?"

  "Who knows. It’s like this on the other side of the city too, closer to where I lived –
ah, shit." A small group of zeds – no more than half a dozen, but enough to concern me – had appeared just in front of us and to the right. "Don’t use your gun unless you have to," I reminded Daniel as he moved to my left side. He knew better than to get between me and the zeds – the only person who still tried to do that nowadays was Luke, and he…

  Don’t fucking think about that right now. The zeds were already picking up speed. They’d clearly heard us talking, and I cursed our stupidity. We’d been so careful, so quiet, until just a few moments ago…though I supposed that it was better to have them in front of us and realizing we were there than hearing us pass by and approaching from behind, where we likely wouldn’t have noticed them quite so soon.

  We stepped behind one of the cars, putting it between us and the zeds. We could see over it and therefore keep an eye on their approach, but it at least acted as a sort of shield, something to slow them down a bit.

  Or so we thought.

  No sooner had the first of the group reached our little roadblock then it grabbed hold of the car and scrambled over it. The others followed suit, like so many ants boiling out of their hill. I stepped back as quickly as I could, barely missing their grasping hands – but I hadn’t looked behind me, and my foot caught on something. Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back with the wind knocked out of my lungs and a zed throwing itself off the roof of the car, aiming to land right on top of me.

  I rolled to my right and heard the thud as it landed where I’d lain just a moment before. I scrambled for my knife, lashing out with it as I felt a hand grab hold of my arm and haul me toward what, I didn’t know.