by Alex Apostol
Rowan Brady followed Lonnie and looked at him like he was a God descended down to Earth. He hung on Lonnie’s every instruction on what he believed was the right way to shoot a gun. It made Gale sick to think that a fresh out of boot camp baby was teaching anyone anything. Lonnie should’ve looked to Rowan in that way.
Rowan Brady was thirteen years older than Lonnie and to say that he was easy on the eyes would have been an understatement. He was downright yummy with his chocolate-brown, flippy hair, high cheek bones, and sultry, stubble-covered, incredibly perfect jaw line. Even though Gale was a proud lesbian, having declared herself so, to her parents’ disappointment, when she was only twelve years old, she still appreciated beautiful people no matter what their gender. And there Rowan was, a perfect specimen of the male gender, drooling over Lonnie’s bullshit so-called knowledge like a lost puppy dog.
Gale wondered for a moment why she ever asked to follow the group when she stumbled upon them. Then she remembered—her swollen feet, her dry mouth, her growling stomach, those things following her relentlessly. Lonnie had saved her. Whether she liked it or not, she owed him for that night.
III.
Gale Lewis ran through the dark with her feet dragging along the grass. She made her way slowly across an open field to an old, large barn on the other end. She moved only slightly faster than the shadowed bodies that stumbled after her. Her chest wheezed as she pushed forward, not sure how much more she had in her. Before she could reach for the doors to the barn, someone stepped outside.
“Get in,” the young man growled at her and gave her a shove.
She fell through the doors and collapsed on the hay-covered floorboards.
“Die, you sons-of-bitches!” she heard him yell before he fired off an array of bullets into the warm, night air.
That wasn’t how Gale would have approached the situation had she had an assault rifle, but she wasn’t in any position to tell him anything. He was out there saving her life. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened had she not found the barn.
There was a rustle in one of the dark corners. Gale scrambled back up to her feet with her fists raised.
An even younger man crawled out from the shadows and stood with a Mossberg 500 shotgun clutched tightly in both his hands. They were shaking. Another man walked out behind him with what looked to be a Beretta .9mm pistol hanging down by his leg. Gale saw a pair of muscular legs and large feet sticking out from behind one of the horse stalls, but they didn’t move.
“Fuck you, you people-eatin’ motherfuckers!” they heard shouts from outside the barn. The rapid gunshots slowed and then tapered off into silence. The young man came back into the barn and secured the doors behind him.
The three men stared at Gale without saying a word. She looked into each of their eyes and decided she would ask to stay, at least for the night. “Thank you,” she said to the man, who was really more boy than man, who’d come to her rescue.
“No problem. Just doin’ my job as a United States soldier,” he said with his chest puffed out as sweat ran down his thick neck.
She nodded and turned to the others. “I’m Gale.”
“I’m Lonnie,” the soldier jumped at the chance to speak again. “That’s Mitchell,” he said as he pointed to the teenager with curly brown hair and an angular, clenched jaw. “That’s my man, Rowan Brady.” He pointed the barrel of his gun over at the tall man with the pistol. His expensive-looking jeans were dirty and his designer t-shirt was ripped. “And somewhere hiding over there in the dark like a fucking scaredy-ass-cat is the hulking Lee.” The legs that stuck out from the shadows still didn’t at the mention of his name.
Gale had finally caught her breath and forced at smile at all of them. “Do you think I could crash here with you till morning?”
Rowan and Mitchell looked to Lonnie. He stared straight into Gale’s gray-blue eyes as the light from the propped up flashlights all around shone lit up her round face and salt and peppered short hair.
The muscles in Lonnie’s large arms tightened as he stuck his chest out even further. “Why not? I didn’t go through shit just to send you back out there.”
Gale’s smile turned sincere. She had a place to hide for the night and she wasn’t alone. Her face fell when the three men returned to their spots in the hay for the evening. If only Salena had made it there with her.
IV.
Thankfully, Lonnie switched from talking about his various made-up accomplishments in the Army to his dull, black, cliché tattoos. This brought on a whole new slew of eye rolling, but not from Gale, who had successfully tuned him out to listen to the sound of the leaves in the trees whenever they were lucky enough to catch a breeze. Mitchell Barnes walked directly behind Lonnie and Rowan, which was torture on his ears.
Lonnie had shoved a loaded shotgun into Mitchell’s hands the second they met in the abandoned barn just hours before Gale arrived. He’d gone in there to take shelter after his house was overrun with the infected. At first it was a blessing to have someone take charge of the situation and keep him safe, but slowly Mitchell remembered how much he hated people and he especially hated Lonnie, who he assumed was a dumb jock in high school. They were the very people who made fun of Mitchell’s curly brown hair and shoved him into the hard metal lockers as he walked down the hall. He despised Lonnie for everything those kids had done to him, but knew that if Lonnie tried anything funny like they had he wouldn’t do anything to stop him. He couldn’t survive without him.
“Can we stop for a second? My ankle’s killing me,” Carolyn Bock said as she sat down on a log and bent her foot around to take a look at the deep, bloodied gash. She winced when she touched a finger to it.
Carolyn had found the group as they were leaving the barn earlier that morning after fleeing her apartment. She’d begged them to let her tag along. Lucky for her, none of the men could refuse a sobbing blonde—none of them except Mitchell. Carolyn was the epitome of all the dumb cheerleaders he used to know and loathe.
“I still think we should have checked her out a little better,” he said to the others.
“I told you,” Carolyn huffed, “I scratched it on the little metal thingy that holds the door shut.”
Mitchell gave a quick snort. “OK, even if you did scratch it on ‘that little metal thingy’, what was your foot doing up there in the first place?”
Carolyn looked away and didn’t answer him.
“My point exactly. How can we trust her?”
Lonnie stopped walking and looked up at the sky to take a long, deep breath. He turned to Mitchell. “I know that puberty hasn’t hit you yet and ya don’t really understand the importance of girls, but trust me, you’ll want to collect them soon enough like rare comic books, or whatever gave you wet dreams before shit went down.”
“I understand the importance of women,” Mitchell called after Lonnie, who walked back to the front of the group. “I just don’t understand the importance of this one in particular,” he added under his breath.
Carolyn glared at him through squinted eyes and heavy makeup. She held up her middle finger as she stood to her feet again.
Bringing up the rear was a wall of a man, who stood about six foot four with broad shoulders and thick calf muscles. He had dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair that brushed against his neck as he walked. No one had heard him say more than seven short words since he joined Lonnie, Rowan, and Mitchell the afternoon before. “I’m a nurse. My name is Lee.” That was all he said.
Carolyn and Gale hadn’t heard him speak at all, but his presence behind them was comforting. Carolyn liked a man who didn’t talk much. Especially one with big, strong arms and deep, brown eyes.
“What was that?” Lonnie whirled his gun around at whatever nonsense he thought he heard, which he did countless times that day.
Rowan stopped on his toes and peered over Lonnie’s head. He was a good five inches taller than him. The woods were silent.
Gale and Mitchell exchanged eye r
olls, which they also did countless times that day. She shook her head and frowned while he tried not to laugh.
Something moved in the brush ahead of them. Everyone saw it that time. The mood changed and the air thickened. It wouldn’t be the first infected person any of them came across since the outbreak, but the fear in each one of them was just as intense as when they saw their very first one. A foot attached to a thin leg in torn black jeans slowly stepped out of the brush and onto the trail.
An array of bullets flailed across the dirt and kicked it up in little fountains where they hit. The group covered their ears as the sound pierced the sky and traveled through the trees. “Cut it out!” Gale yelled at him. “Are you crazy?”
The woods fell silent again.
Lonnie was panting and his eyes were wide. The leg had disappeared and a pair of small hands attached to two colorfully tattooed arms stuck out instead. They waved in surrender.
“Please, don’t shoot,” a woman’s shaky voice pleaded. “I’m not one of those things. I’m just…me.” She stepped out onto the trail.
It was the first time Lonnie lowered his gun since he grabbed it from his truck more than a day ago. He stared at the woman, taken in by her thin waist, curvy chest, and plump lips. She wasn’t like Carolyn, who was also curvy and beautiful, but dumb and shallow. There was something real about the woman in front of him, a deep connection he hadn’t felt in a long time. He had to give his head a good shake to bring him back. There was a protocol to follow for newcomers. “State your name and business,” he said with authority as he pointed his black and tan rifle at her again.
She raised her hands higher in the air and took two shaky steps forward. “Um, my name is Gretchen,” she said slowly. “And my business is…survival?”
A loud snort came from behind Lonnie.
He quickly whirled around to point the gun at Mitchell, the barrel inches from his face. “You got something to say, nerd?”
“N-no,” Mitchell stuttered as he shook his head. His prominent jaw clenched tightly shut afterwards.
“I’m here to protect the group,” Lonnie proclaimed to the sky as he moved the gun away from Mitchell. “If anyone has a problem with that, there’s the door.”
Mitchell tried his hardest not to laugh again, but air escaped his nostrils in bursts.
Lonnie glared at him. He rested his gun on his shoulder like a little toy soldier. His cold, blue eyes dared Mitchell to speak.
“I’m sorry, it’s just, where’s the door exactly?”
Lonnie’s brow furrowed while, simultaneously, his eyes widened to show the whites around the pupils. He could have been clinically insane in that moment. “Shut up,” he said flatly.
He turned back to Gretchen and relaxed the muscles in his face. Without a word he raised his thumb and jabbed it at the air behind him to signal Gretchen to fall in line with the others.
“We’re not even going to check her out?” Mitchell couldn’t resist. “Look at her. She’s got scratches, bruises, blood all over her clothes. She could have been bit. She could be infected.”
“I was in a car accident up the road,” she said in heated defense to Lonnie.
He looked at Gretchen and nodded his head, and then he narrowed his beady eyes at Mitchell before he continued ahead of everyone else.
Gretchen scanned each person individually as they passed her by and then eyed the back of Lonnie with suspicion. She walked carefully over to Gale’s side and did her best to muster up a pathetic, soft smile.
Gale returned it with a quick pull of her mouth, but let it immediately fall back down to the miserable, tired frown she’d been wearing all day.
“Welcome to the Wanderers.”
V.
Christine Moore opened the door to the patio and stuck her head out cautiously. The humidity in the air was heavy on her face, but it felt fantastic. She couldn’t remember a day in her life when she hadn’t gone outside, even if it was just to go to and from her car. She took a deep breath. The fresh air filled her stale lungs. It’d only been a week since it all started and she was locked away in the apartment, but with the warm sun on her face she could have sworn it’d been years. Her shoulders relaxed as she closed the door behind her so it was only open a crack.
Liam was still somewhere in the building with Zack and the others checking for infected people, as they did every morning since that first infamous day they were brought together. Some days the building remained infected free overnight and they were home within twenty minutes. Other days they had one or two that wandered in that they had to take out again. Either way Christine had a little bit of time to enjoy the outdoors in peace.
She sat down on one of the plastic chairs with a long, slow sigh. Her eyes closed as she faced up toward the sun. Something moved below in the parking lot and caught her eyes before they were able to close all the way.
“Mr. Alexander?” Christine said to herself when she spotted the elderly man walking towards the Dumpster. The old man lived in the building next to hers, building five.
He took slow, bumbling steps, which wasn’t unusual for him. Mr. Alexander was eighty-two years old and had lived in the same one bedroom apartment since his wife died almost twenty years ago. There’d been days when Christine saw him in his pajamas wondering outside on her way to her car in the mornings, too early for the sun to be up let alone anyone else. Every single time, she took him softly by the arm, spoke to him reassuringly, and lead him back to his apartment where the door was always left wide open. She had no idea where his kids were or why he wasn’t in a nursing home. It was clear he was in some stage of Alzheimer’s.
Christine watched while leaning forward in her chair. He legs told her to stand up and go to him as they bounced up and down, but her head made her stay put. She chewed on her thumbnail as the old man lumbered forward awkwardly.
Mr. Alexander finally made it to the Dumpster, which stood ten feet tall, and let out a raspy exhale as he peered inside the side window-shaped opening at chest height. His large head turned on his frail neck to scan the contents.
Christine considered calling out to him to tell him he should go back to his apartment. It wasn’t safe to be outside anymore. The poor man probably hadn’t heard about what was going on. But something stopped her. He didn’t look right. She ripped off a chunk of her overgrown nail with her teeth and spat it to the patio floor as she continued to watch in silence.
The feeble man leaned inside the opening as he reached down with both hands. One foot left the ground and Christine wondered how the metal wasn’t digging into his stomach. What did he see in there that was worth sticking his head in other peoples’ garbage? Finally, he reemerged again, clutching something moving in his hands.
Christine’s eyes narrowed as she tried to make out what he was holding so dearly. When she saw the long, pink, leathery tail her eyes widened in horror and her mouth parted. She should go help him. He clearly didn’t know where he was, let alone that he was holding a giant, hairy rat. It could have rabies. What if it bit him?
“Mr. Alexander!” she called down to him. Her voice carried over the lot.
The old man turned his head slowly to look at her with white eyes.
Christine slapped her hands over her mouth.
The old man’s skin was pale and sagging, but it had always been that way. His hair was balding. A few stray white wisps clung for dear life in the breeze, but Christine had never known him with a full set of hair, or even half. But the gaping hole in the side of his face and the skin missing from his jaw that exposed the red tender muscles and stained teeth underneath, that was new.
When his body turned to her she saw that his light blue button up pajama shirt had been ripped open and the white tank top underneath was soaked with old, dark blood. What was left of his crooked, yellow teeth snapped at the air as he gave a low hiss and then he turned back to the rat in his hands. He shoved the poor rodent into his mouth and bit it in half as it squealed in panic.
Christ
ine let out a muffled whimper behind her hands and felt the sudden rise of her breakfast from her stomach. She repeatedly swallowed the spit in her mouth to keep the bile down.
The entrails of the rat spilled out of the open end and fell to the pavement with a splat. Mr. Alexander dropped to his knees and devoured every last bit with a ravenous hunger. Furred skin clung to his cracked, white lips.
Christine lowered one hand to press against the patio door. Her heart was racing, ready to beat right out of her chest. Her breaths came out hard and fast as it flared her nostrils. Tears gathered in her eyes, but they never fell. The sound of the front door opening doubled her rising panic as she imagined Mr. Alexander walking in to devour her next.
Liam shut the door behind him and started the process of locking the dozen deadbolts and chains. His hands were quick, but unsteady.
Christine forced herself to breathe as she lowered her hand. She watched Liam walk over to the couch and sit down slowly. His face was frozen still, his eyes fixed on a random spot on the wall across from him. Her heart raced again as she peered at him. Something was wrong. She needed him to tell her what had happened, but he didn’t say anything when she walked back inside.
“I went out on the patio,” she blurted out. She expected him to stand up and yell at her, to tell her how stupid that was and that she shouldn’t go outside again. At least then she could get the conversation going.
Instead, Liam remained petrified on the couch with his back rigid, hovered a few inches off the cushion.
“Liam?” she asked and took a few careful steps into his line of vision.
“I think I need to go to the university,” he said. His stale tone matched the vacant expression on his face.
“What? Are you serious?”