by T. L. Walker
He stomped around to the driver’s side and wrapped his hand around the corner of my doorframe."This is fucking selfish,"he said."Leaving us here to deal with all of these people..."
"I told you, I’ll bring back supplies."
"By yourself? No way."
More than anything I wanted to slam my door shut and drive away, but Holden was whining, trying to jump into the front seat, and with the damn chain in my lap it was all I could do to keep him from escaping the car and running to Mike.
"Mike, please, just let me go. I’ve already told Richard and Lauren. The people from the school, they won’t have any weapons and you guys can easily keep them locked up. But all of you need food, and there’s not enough of it here."
"If you go, you’re not going to come back."
I squeezed my eyes shut and sighed, knowing that at this point there was no point in lying to him. So just keep it simple. "I will. I’ll be bringing back food and supplies."
"And after that?"
I shrugged."Like I said, I’m done with this place."
"And like I said, if you’re done with it, than I am too. C’mon, Charlie. It’s been you and me since the beginning. I don’t want to stay here alone."
"You’re safe here."Mike raised his eyebrows."Well, safe enough. Safer than you’d be out there. C’mon yourself, Mike. Don’t do this to me."
"Too late. Also, you dropped this. It’s why I came after you."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small notebook that I’d found on Luke. Luke’s body.
"Just give it to me, Mike. Please."
"No way. You can have it if you let me come with you."
"What’s going on here?"
"Shit," I mumbled, glancing over my right shoulder at Richard and Lauren. The vet was practically running toward us, and instead of angry, he looked worried."Don’t worry, Richard, I’m just letting myself out!" I called, reaching to pull the car door closed.
But Mike held it in place. I could have forced it shut, but there was no such thing as a quick getaway, now.
I sighed and gave in.
"I’m going with her," Mike told Richard.
"That’s what it looked like. Mike, we need you here. All these people..."
"It will be worse if you don’t have any way to feed them. What if Charlie gets out there and gets hurt, or killed? Then there’s no one to bring back whatever she might find. She’ll be safer if someone else is with her, anyway."
Richard must have caught the look on my face, because suddenly his own expression went blank. He knows.
"Yes, you’re right. I think you should go, Mike," he said.
"But what about the new people? You need more of us here to keep an eye on them."
"I think Mike is right – someone needs to keep an eye on you. Now give me that lock and chain and the key, and let Mike into the car. I’ll close up behind you."
I knew there was no point in arguing. I unlocked my car doors and Mike rushed to get in. The moment he was seated, Holden popped up between us and started licking the kid’s face."See, Holden didn’t want you to leave without me, either," Mike grumbled. I didn’t bother responding, just put my car in gear and rolled through the gate, stopping to make sure Richard was able to secure the gate. I watched in the review mirror as I drove away; he, Lauren, and Mabel didn’t move, but then I turned a corner and that was that.
Neither Mike nor I spoke until I reached the park’s exit, a place I hadn’t seen since we’d ended up at the zoo. I stopped and put the car in park."Last chance to change your mind, kid."
He looked at me, his eyes sad."No way. I’m with you, Charlie. Beginning to end."
"Okay, kid. Okay," I finally agreed, tears burning in the corners of my eyes as I released the emergency brake and shifted into first, taking a right onto the main road and leaving everything – and everyone else – behind.
Treat your fallen heroes with care.
Epilogue
I was changed before I left the zoo, that much is obvious...but it was only later, when I finally read Luke’s last words, that I fell off the edge.
I don’t know what I would have done, had Mike not been with me. Certainly not gone back to the zoo. In fact, all I wanted now was to return to my family’s farm. Even if it meant the end of me, I had a one-track mind. Get back to the place where you found Luke.
But Mike was there, and he was the one who directed me to local stores and gas stations and even, once, back to the school. Most places had been thoroughly ransacked, but we found random useful items here and there – mostly in houses and cars, although once in a while we fought our way through small groups of zeds trapped in stores and were able to gather everything from junk food to the occasional half-assed weapon, like a tire iron...or six.
I won’t get into what we went through to get those.
Or what it feels like to siphon gasoline.
At one point we even made it back to my old condo, something I’d wanted to do since leaving the farm in the first place. If the zeds who’d been trapped in their own condos were still there, they weren’t up to making noise anymore, and I wasn’t about to check on them. I merely gathered up a few personal and clothing items I’d been missing and then we were on our way again.
We did go back to the zoo, eventually. We separated out most of what we’d found to leave there, and we also brought information – mainly that many of the zeds were slowing down again; some of them were almost entirely immobile. Mike and I were gone for several weeks, and during that time we saw far fewer of what we’d once called ‘super zeds’, and even less of the newly-turned ones. Instead we came across rotting bodies, many of which were almost entirely immobile. Even if they were still standing, it was often just barely, and we rarely had to truly exert ourselves to take them out.
It was early evening on a late-spring day (and hotter than it had any right to be) when we finally returned to the zoo. I was hoping, probably stupidly, that the gate wouldn’t be guarded...but no, Ethan was there, with Monika – of all people – by his side.
Mike gave me a wary look; we’d already had our discussion and he knew that I wanted to go back to the farm. I’d tried to convince him to stay at the zoo, but he remained adamant about remaining by my side.
I hated that and wanted it at the same time.
I left Holden in the car as we unloaded everything we’d collected for the zoo. "You came back," Ethan said as we carried our first load of food up to the gate. I set down my burden and turned back to gather the rest of what we’d gathered. "But you’re not staying."
Mike and I both remained silent, but when I brought the second armful of supplies back to the gate, I admitted, "No. We’re not."
"Is everything okay here?" Mike asked, looking from Monika to Ethan and back again.
"Yes," Ethan stated.
Monika gave him a soft smile. "We’re low on food, but everyone is helping. We even fixed the breach in that back pen. Had to let El loose to forage, though. Sometimes she comes back to the gate and we let her in for a while."
The fact that the elephant was still a thing was most telling of all. These people were fine; probably, as I’d always believed, better off without me.
I turned to Mike. "You sure you don’t want to stay?" He rolled his eyes, and this time my reluctance to give in was completely fake.
"Keep an eye on Lauren and Mabel for us," I told Ethan.
At first he just nodded, but when Mike and I turned to walk away, he called out, "Thanks, Charlie!"
I turned around and smiled. "You’re welcome. Take good care of yourselves, okay? Make sure everyone knows that the zeds seem to be...shutting down, for lack of a better term. You still need to be careful, I’m not sure how permanent this is, but it’s not like it used to be."
Monika looked so hopeful that I had to turn away. I wasn’t sure how solid her position was at the zoo, but clearly they trusted her. At least somewhat.
Nothing more was said. Mike and I returned to my car, and
this time I didn’t bother looking in the rearview mirror as we drove away. Even Holden remained silent and still, stretched out in the backseat as if nothing had happened.
"You okay?" Mike eventually asked.
"Just fine."
"So...the farm, then?"
"Yeah," I said, flashing him a quick smile. "The farm, then."
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It’s pretty much impossible to publish a book without a lot of help, and while I certainly learned that when I wrote and published my first novel, this one was quite a bit more difficult to complete (for a lot of reasons).
To everyone who read one of my many drafts of How to Start Living (in the Zombie Apocalypse), I cannot thank you enough...but special thanks have to go out to my friend Tykina for being both beta reader and editor and giving me such great feedback.
I also received an outpouring of support in other ways from two very important people – first, my mother, who is my rock, one of the strongest people I know, and who forced me to face hard truths...ones that led to my completing this book a lot faster than I would have otherwise. Second, to Brian, who upended his life for me and in doing so gave me time to focus on not just this story but on so many other things that I love to do.
Finally, while the characters in How to Start Living are of my own creation, one who wouldn’t exist without a lot of real-life inspiration is Charlie’s dog Holden. He is an amalgamation of my two amazing dogs, Wendy and Rigby, who more than anyone or anything else have kept me kind of sane and fairly grounded throughout the past few years. The “Who rescued who?” question associated with rescue pups applies to these two babies more than they could ever possibly know.
T.L. Walker has a B.A. in History and a long-established passion for writing. She has written editorials, news pieces, recommendations, and reviews for the popular geek culture website The Geekiary since 2013, and her debut novel, The Way of Reckoning, was published in 2014. Much of her time is comprised of running Saga Event Planning (the parent company for Ice & Fire Con and Beach City Con) and traveling around the country speaking about geek culture at events such as San Diego Comic-Con, Dragon Con, TedX Sarasota, and more. Although she currently resides in the Orlando, Florida area, she is a proud Connecticut native and calls Greenville, South Carolina the ‘home of her heart’.
Author Twitter @taralynnewalker