Lost in the Apocalypse

by Mortimer, L. C.

  After the first snowfall had melted into slush, she decided it was time to go. She wouldn’t survive the winter here: not without a better food supply. That simply wasn’t going to happen. She had spent the warm months of summer enjoying her dead neighbors’ food. Now it was time for her to start acting like a grownup.

  Now it was time for her to move on.

  Julie grabbed her suitcase from the downstairs closet. It was the blue one with the faded edges. The suitcase was covered in stickers from her childhood trips. One from a visit to the fish museum was still as bright as the day she put it on there. Others, like the stickers from Disney World, had faded. She plopped the old suitcase on the bed and stared at it, briefly wondering how she had managed to pack her summer wardrobes in it as a child. Summers at Grandma’s house were the best thing that had ever happened to Julie.

  She wondered if Grandma was still alive.

  The old woman wouldn’t go down without a fight. Julie knew that with certainty.

  She picked up her last pair of clean underwear, the pair she’d been saving, and put it in the suitcase first. When the infection had first started, people just went about as usual, wearing clothes and dirtying them up. Once the power went out, though, clean clothes became something of a luxury. Julie had worn the same skirt and tank top every day for a week before giving up and changing into something new. The only other clean outfit she had was the dress she had bought for a prom she never went to.

  The purple-and-black lace gown hung delicately in her closet, begging to be worn. Unceremoniously, Julie plopped it in the suitcase. She put in her favorite photo album and a bottle of water. Then she zipped it up and carried the suitcase downstairs. She didn’t need her stuffed animal collection, her mother’s favorite necklace, or silverware. She just needed to go. She just needed to be somewhere:anywhere. She just needed to escape from her reality.

  Julie carried the suitcase outside and got her lasso and her gun. She locked the front door, though it was probably unnecessary. Anyone who wanted to break in would simply break in. Still, it felt odd to leave the house unlocked, as if she were begging for uninvited company. That simply wouldn’t do.

  Julie walked to the garage and looked at her zombie for a moment before deciding that Peanut should come with her. In any case, it wouldn’t hurt, and she never minded the company.

  4.

  When you’re alone at the end of the word, sometimes you feel just that: alone.

  It’s not the same kind of loneliness you feel when you don’t get invited to the prom or when your friends go party without you. No, this type of loneliness is different. It’s harsher. It’s raw. It’s the type of loneliness that makes you want to curl up into a ball and run screaming through the streets at the same time.

  And it made Julie feel like she was going insane.

  She put Peanut in the back of the car. She wasn’t entirely sure why. Who in their right mind, after all, would travel with a zombie? Who would bring their “pet” with them in a time like this? But having Peanut was better than having no one, Julie reasoned, and so her dead friend came along for the ride.

  Julie couldn’t quite remember the way to her grandmother’s cabin. It was no more than an hour, she reasoned. Maybe two, if she hit obstacles.Then again, maybe it wasn’t worth trying to get there. Maybe her grandmother was dead or maybe the cabin was overrun with bandits. Or raccoons. It didn’t matter. Nothing did anymore.

  There wasn’t going to be any traffic, Julie knew, but she had no idea what the roads were like anymore. Maybe they weren’t even there. Maybe it would just be her and Peanut, alone in the world together. If the roads were gone, would they really want to walk to a haven? Would a place of solitude even exist anymore? Could she even find her way to someplace safe? Did she even care anymore?

  The zombie moaned from the backseat: one of the first times Julie had heard her creature being upset. She wondered if zombies got car sick. Then she realized that was silly. Of course they didn’t. Maybe they just didn’t like the feeling of moving so quickly when they were used to shuffling around like rag dolls.

  Julie started the car and pulled out of the driveway. For the first time in months, she was doing something normal. She was doing something human. She was doing something that would make her feel like a real adult. Julie was driving a car into the heart of the apocalypse.

  And all she wanted was her mother.

  She wanted to close her eyes and picture Mom’s face. She wanted to think once more about the way her mother smelled, the way she moved, the way she laughed. But Julie was trying to find something new. She was trying to let go of her pain and move on with her life, whatever that meant.

  She popped in a favorite CD and started listening to the sounds of classic rock as she and Peanut left their pleasant suburban world behind. The road would be long and boring and lonely, but at least they had each other, sort of.

  They might die tomorrow. They might die today. But they weren’t going to die from starvation sitting trapped in a tiny house, alone.

  Today was their day.

  Julie drove faster.