She nodded slowly, then reclined her seat and closed her eyes.
“Guess I better get comfy, then.”
Chapter 17
Emily woke up and stretched lazily in the seat. She groaned as she did. Everything was sore, she suddenly realized, and it was an unpleasant feeling.
“You okay?” Neil asked from his side of the truck. She nodded then whispered.
“Let’s go home.”
He nodded curtly, started the engine, and pulled back onto the road. Neither one of them spoke as they made their way back to the house. It took a long time with lots of twists and turns. Twice they went the wrong way and bad to backtrack, but after what felt like ages, they were close to the house.
And then the truck died.
It sputtered slowly before grinding to a halt. Neil didn’t even have time to pull it to the side of the road. They were just in the middle of the gravel with fields on either side and the rising sun bearing down on them.
“Um, Neil?” Emily said, her voice faltering slightly.
“Yes, Em?”
“I’m scared.”
He grabbed her and hugged her in the cab of the truck, ignoring the fact that it was a long walk home. Not too long, but long enough to be cumbersome with their supplies.
“Two miles,” he murmured. “No more, I promise.”
“What if they find us?”
“They won’t. They would have found us already, and they didn’t, so we’re safe. We’re safe, baby. We’re safe.”
They gathered their backpacks and what was left of their food and started walking toward the house. The trudged slowly. Though they all knew winter was coming and the air had been cooler, it felt hot. Walking with their gear was boring and they had nothing to say and they were tired.
Worst of all, Emily thought, they hadn’t actually found anything to bring home. No gifts. No resources. Nothing.
The outing had been a huge bust.
And now another group, a bad one, an evil one, knew there were survivors in the area.
Just great.
They were nearing the bend just before the driveway when Neil paused.
“Wait,” he said. “Something’s wrong.” She stopped dead in her tracks when she heard it, too. That sound. She had heard it before. Her mouth felt dry and her legs began moving of their own accord. They were too close to the house for this to be happening.
They were too close and this was too dark, too horrible to even think about.
“What is that?” Neil whispered, but Emily kept moving until she could peek around the bend.
Chaos.
Everything was in chaos.
The fence had been broken, knocked down. Zombies couldn’t have done that, not on their own, but a herd of cattle could have, especially an infected herd with one goal in mind.
“The cows,” she whispered, coughing out the word. The cows she had seen with Butter were there. Everywhere. Some lay dead on their sides. Some were belly up with their legs in the air. Almost all of them were dead. A few were incapacitated, but still emitting low growls.
Cody sat on the porch, bleeding, hand gripping his shoulder. Kari was standing over him, shooting into the cattle that remained. And Butter…
Butter was walking among them, dead alive.
Butter had been bitten.
Kari shot the last cow and collapsed as Emily walked up to the house. She stepped around the corpses and walked up to the stairs. Each one creaked louder than it ever had before as she went up to the porch.
Kari was holding Cody, crying, kissing his forehead, making promises she’d never be able to keep. She was whispering and crying and every so often she’d look up and wail into the air. Emily’s heart cracked as she saw her friend’s last shred of hope disappear into the darkness that was their world.
Cody had been bitten.
Sweet, funny, wonderful Cody.
Cody’s eyes locked with Emily’s, and he nodded, just barely. She knew what she had to do, what he wanted her to do. She would have to do what only she could. Neil would, she knew, but Emily could save him from the pain of having to put down another friend. Emily could do this. She could spare Kari from having to make this choice and she could do this for Neil. Her Neil.
She could it for her friend, Cody.
She had never made promises or oaths that she would handle things if someone got bitten, but staring into Cody’s face as he bled out over the porch, she knew what she had to do. It was what she would want him to do if their roles were reversed. She wouldn’t want to turn into one of the monsters. She wouldn’t want to put her family at risk.
Kari saw Emily approach and started screaming. She was still holding Cody, but yelling.
“Where were you? Where did you go? We thought you were dead…” The scream broke off into more cries, and Emily felt Neil behind her. He hugged her and whispered, but she couldn’t move. She knew what she had to do, but she didn’t want to.
She turned.
Neil was looking at Butter wandering around the yard. He must have just turned. He was darting quickly around, but not toward them. Why wasn’t he coming to them? He walked from one edge of the broken fence to the other, back and forth, back and forth.
“Him and that damn fence,” Neil muttered, but Emily just watched him. Butter seemed to be in no hurry to eat anyone. For just a second, she wondered if they could keep him, but then she realized that was stupid. It was reckless. It wasn’t what he would have wanted.
So this was it, then. This was how their world ended. Everyone had died and everyone had come back to life and now they were going to die again.
Neil and Emily walked up to the porch and over to Cody and Kari.
“What happened?” Emily said softly, putting her hand on Kari’s shoulder, but Kari shook her head and held Cody tighter.
He tried to whisper something, tried to say something.
“I love you,” Kari cried out. “There were so many of them and they were everywhere at once, and we couldn’t…we couldn’t…”
Cody began to shake, then his body went limp. Kari continued crying, seemingly oblivious to what was about to happen. Neil exchanged looks with Emily, then grabbed Kari. He lifted her up and pulled her across the porch. She screamed the whole way.
Emily pulled out her .38 special and raised the gun. Cody and his bright green hair, roots showing. Cody and his big smile. Cody and his tender heart. What a horrible way to lose a lover, she thought, her heart aching for Kari, her heart aching for herself. This was no way to lose half of their family. This was no way to end their story.
Flashbacks of the past few months filled her mind: visions of the adventures they could have had. What if the fence had been stronger? What if they had killed the herd when they’d come across it the first time? What if they hadn’t settled in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere?
These were all the things they would never know.
Kari screamed and punched at Neil, trying to get free, trying to get back to Cody. Butter was still meandering around the yard, seemingly in no hurry. The last cow had finally stopped groaning. The world was silent but for Kari.
It was up to her now.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she stared at Cody’s corpse. She had lost Melanie. She had lost everything. And now she was going to lose even more.
Emily’s hand was steady. She needed to do it quickly before he woke back up, before he came back from the grave, before he bit her first. She owed Cody this much. He was a good man, and a good friend, and he didn’t deserve the brutal death he had gotten.
Emily shot Cody first.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then she pulled the trigger a second time.
Author
L.C. Mortimer loves zombies almost as much as she loves coffee. When she's not on a caffeine-induced writing spree, she can be found stocking up on canned goods for the apocalypse. Mortimer loves reading, playing zombie video games (7 Days to Die is currently her favorite), and spending time with
her partner-in-crime: her husband of 10 years.
A Note for Readers
If you enjoyed this book, would you consider leaving a review? Indie books depend largely on reviews to gain visibility with online retailers and I would greatly appreciate hearing what you thought of my story!
Thank you for reading.
I hope you enjoyed Emily, Neil, Robert, Butter, Cody, and Kari’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you would like to read more of my work, turn the page to read my short story, Peanut Butter Zombie.
Peanut Butter Zombie
1.
Before the end of the world, Julie had been gothic. Before the outbreak, before the virus, before the distribution of gas masks and the bombing of entire cities, she had been lonely. She had been awkward. She had been the misfit whose parents only wanted what was best for her, but who never really understood exactly what that meant. And now she was even more alone than she had ever been before.
It doesn't take long, during an apocalyptic event, to figure out who your real friends are.It doesn't take long to figure out who really cares about you, who would really miss you if something happened to you. If you had ever hoped that the secretly-sweet jock would notice you when you were covered in blood from killing the undead who had tried to break into the remnants of your home, if you had ever wondered if the cheerleading squad would show up and bring you supplies for always being a great sport, if you had ever thought that maybe one of your classmates would come visit just to make sure you were okay, well, you would be wrong.
At least, that's how it was for Julie.
At the end of the world, she was just as alone as she was during the beginning of the world, and during the middle. At the end of the world, she felt just as weird, just as strange as she had when things were normal.
And she hated it.
She stayed in her family's home long after everyone else had evacuated the small town she lived in. Dad had boarded up the windows before he died, so she didn't have to worry about that. It didn't matter anyway, not really. Julie was so clumsy that she wouldn't have been able to figure out how to put the boards up. Chances were that she would have just hidden upstairs, maybe in the attic, hoping that no one would find her.
No one that is, but Peanut.
It wasn't that Julie had planned to capture a zombie. It wasn't that she had planned to find solace in the fact that someone was just as lost and afraid as she was. It just happened that Julie had found Peanut and now that they were together, nothing would tear their friendship apart. Nothing.
The zombie was female and roughly the same age as Julie. It had probably wandered into the neighborhood looking for food because when Julie found it, the zombie had simply been standing in the backyard looking lost. There were no other Infected around, so Julie felt like she didn't really have much of a choice. Peanut hadn't been trying to attack her, nor was she covered in blood. Julie wondered briefly if that meant Peanut was a vegetarian.
She got some rope from the garage and made a makeshift lasso, surprising even herself with the skills she demonstrated. Julie hadn't been a Girl Scout for many years. Part of her was still shocked she remembered how to tie even the most basic of knots.
Swinging the rope, Julie tossed it around Peanut's head and led the small, underfed Infected into the garage. Peanut came willingly, without fuss, without trying to bite her.
This one was different.
Things change when you see your family die.
The way that you view the world changes.
When everyone around you becomes cannibalistic, hungry, unendingly crazy, you start to lose hope, even just a little bit.
Julie put Peanut in the garage and tied the other end of the lasso to a support beam in the center of the room.She stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the way that Peanut stood still. It was strange, really. Julie had never seen an Infected be so quiet. Peanut looked almost like a statue, like a strange reminder of a world that had once been alive. Julie squished her eyes shut for a moment, pretending she remembered what that world had felt like.
Then she opened her eyes, shut the garage door, and walked quietly back to the house.
2.
"I suppose I ought to feed you," Julie told Peanut out loud.
She had brought from her well-stocked kitchen an assortment of various foods: lettuce, rotting meat, and a small jar of peanut butter.
Julie tried to offer a piece of the lettuce first, but Peanut simply looked away, pretending, it seemed, like she didn't see the unpleasant vegetable.
"I know, I know," Julie muttered. "You aren't a rabbit. Don't know why I even tried."
She grabbed a spoonful of the rotting hamburger meat. It was filled with maggots, and Julie wasn't quite sure why she still had it. The meat had simply gone bad in the fridge and she hadn't bothered to clean it out. There had, after all, been more important things on her mind: like survival, like nursing her parents back to health, like trying to bury them when her efforts failed.
Peanut wouldn't touch it. Julie sat there for a moment, stunned. What kind of Infected wouldn't eat meat? Julie sniffed the spoon, careful to not get too close to the wiggling maggots, then gagged at the stench.
"Well, I wouldn't eat it, either," Julie said. She thought about tossing the meat outside, but wasn't sure if it would attract other Infected who did eat meat. Instead, she simply set it aside and grabbed her other spoon and the jar of peanut butter.
Peanut went nuts.
If zombies could smile, Julie would have said that's exactly what Peanut did. The creature grabbed the spoon from Julie's outstretched palms and clumsily brought it to her mouth.
Watching a zombie try to lick peanut butter off a spoon was by far the most ridiculous thing that Julie had ever seen, but it seemed to make the creature happy. Julie laughed out loud for the first time in weeks as the petite zombie tried desperately to find a way to lick the spoon. Eventually, she figured out that if she placed the spoon on the ground and knelt down to lick it, she could enjoy the peanut butter.
"You need a name," Julie said as her new zombie enjoyed the small snack. "And I think Peanut Butteris the one for you."
The zombie looked up from her treat, staring at Julie.
"Peanut for short," Julie said quickly.
And the zombie looked back down.
***
Spending the apocalypse alone in the house where you grew up is stranger than you'd expect. Memories are held in the oddest places, laughing at you as the struggle for sanity rages on. The faint bloodstain on the white carpet screamed at Julie, reminding her of the time she had stubbed her toe on the edge of the sofa. Her mother had been so upset. There was the tiny chip on the kitchen counter where her father had once dropped a kitchen knife. It was Thanksgiving. He had never carved a turkey before. Then there were the pictures of her childhood, all neatly lined up in a row on the mantle. Julie turned them down. She didn't need to see the way she used to smile. She remembered it clearly enough to never need pictures again.
It had only been a few weeks since Julie's parents died, but already she was beginning to wonder if there was any point in living, any point in continuing on alone.Her neighbors were all dead: none of them, as you might imagine, from starvation. They had all been eaten or died trying to evacuate. Julie was alone in the world, alone in the darkness, alone with nothing but her thoughts and Peanut.
Sometimes she had to escape from it all. Julie wandered over to the empty houses on her street from time to time and looked for new food to try, stole the unread books, and tried on all the clothes that that her overpaid neighbors used to wear. She stared at the stacks of appliances, the piles of DVDs, the endless televisions and gaming consoles and overpriced jewelry.
This had been their lives.
These homes held everything that had once been so important to them.
And now it was nothing: fodder for the undead who now ruled the world.
Julie took all of their peanut butter.
3.
The thing Julie minded the most was the silence. She remembered summer nights from years past when she couldn’t sleep because of the crickets chirping.Now it seemed all she wished for was the quiet noises of animals still alive. She never saw squirrels anymore. The birds had all died or left. Even the insects seemed to have vanished since the plague: all except for the fleas, which were out in record amounts.
Julie hated the fleas.
Peanut didn’t seem to get them as bad as other zombies, but Julie still washed her on occasion. Peanut moaned in protest, but Julie ignored her and threw a bucket of water on her to wash away the filth. Despite the limited diet that Peanut consumed, she still seemed to attract the varmints of death and decay: a consequence of her dying form.
“It’ll be okay,” Julie told her softly, cleaning her grey face with a damp cloth. Peanut never tried to bite her. Julie never knew why.
Sometimes she held her wrist just inches from Peanut’s face, knowing the Infected creature could smell her blood pulsing through her veins. Peanut’s eyes met Julie’s once, as if to ask why she would tempt her so.
Julie pulled her wrist away and left, disgusted with herself. It wasn’t that she wanted to die: not really. She just wanted out. She just wanted to be free. She just wanted a way to find happiness, and she didn’t know how. The world had changed so quickly and so harshly that it didn’t make sense anymore.
None of it did.
She just needed a way to be free.
***
It had been days, weeks, and then months. The seasons changed and still Julie lived alone with only Peanut for companionship. The days blurred together as she spent most of her time sleeping, reading, or looking at photo albums. She wondered sometimes why she still tried, why she continued to stay where she was. Her parents weren’t coming back. No one was coming back. The house that haunted her was never going to be filled with love again. It would never hold anything but longings for a time past. It was as dead as the zombie who sat in her garage.
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