Shore Haven

by Reynolds, Jennifer

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  —The beginning of the outbreak.—

  We spent the better part of the next week securing the hotel and fending off the creatures that tried to come in after us. The hotel wasn’t a large one—only five floors. The top level was empty. They hadn’t had enough guests willing to pay for those extravagant rooms in the days leading up to the outbreak. We made sure the roof door was secure and scavenged everything useful from the top floor—not that there was much to scavenge aside from blankets, towels, and toiletries. The mini-bars had little apart from alcohol.

  The fourth floor was nearly the same aside from the room that had two dead bodies in it, and the one that had a turned. I had to kill the zombie since Sadie and Maddie were down the hall wrapping the two dead bodies for easy removal. We’d propped the balcony doors open to air out the room, and we could hear the turned roaming around outside. Their commotion meant that I didn’t register the zombie behind the door of the room I was approaching.

  The man in the business suit lunged for me the second the door opened. I screamed and began swinging my metal bar wildly. After that farce of a fight, Sadie insisted that I practice what little she knew about fending off attackers.

  I managed to break one of the man’s arms, a few ribs, and crack his skull before he fell. I hated shoving the bar through his temple while he lay on the carpet but grabbing some towels to put under him to catch the mess had been the farthest thought from my mind.

  Maddie and Sadie made it to me just as I was pulling the bar out of the man’s brain.

  “Gross,” my sister said, covering her mouth.

  “Pretty much,” I said, going into the room to get something with which to clean the bar. The man had destroyed the place in the process of turning and in his attempt to escape.

  “This is disgusting,” Sadie said, examining the room.

  “Yep. Do you want to clean this room? Or leave it as it is and shut it up as uninhabitable?”

  “Clean it. If we’re going to live in the hotel for the unforeseeable future, we’re going to have to clean it. This mess will stink and draw bugs.”

  “All right,” I said, then turned and vomited into a trash can.

  That floor took us an entire day to clean due to the bodies and the mess in the businessman’s room.

  “How much longer will the power be on, do you think?” Maddie asked at one point as we were filling bathtubs and large plastic containers with water.

  “Not much longer, I would imagine,” Sadie said. “That’s why we’re doing this.” She held up a jug pointedly. “And why we’ve barred all doors that lead out of the building except that side one we use to discard the bodies.”

  “What about the glass balcony doors. Should we worry about people breaking them and getting in?” Maddie asked.

  “I’m more worried about the zombies getting in here rather than other people. But now that you’ve mentioned that, I guess we should board up the doors on the first few floors just in case.”

  As we discussed things, I racked my brain for what else we could be missing or forgetting. Sadie seemed to have thought about nearly everything and made plans those first few days instead of cowering in fear the way Maddie and I had. I couldn’t believe what was happening and was hoping everything we were doing was merely things to keep us occupied and not us planning for a zombie apocalypse future.

  Two weeks after Maddie and I had seen the woman in the gallery, the three of us were going stir crazy inside the hotel. We rotated shifts and watch locations throughout the hotel, but all we saw were the turned, none of which made any indication that they knew we were nearby, which probably had a little to do with the dead bodies in the dumpsters we’d stashed in the alley behind the hotel.

  We left some debris in front of the building and poolside, but no bodies. The entire city smelled, so we barely noticed all those bodies back there. I mentioned burning them, but Maddie and Sadie worried that the smoke would draw the turned to us. We couldn’t just leave them there, I argued, but the only option we had was to somehow move them away from the building before setting them ablaze, and without heavy machinery, we weren’t moving those large metal dumpsters full of bodies, and we weren’t moving the bodies one at a time.

  At the beginning of the third week, Sadie came to us with the news that she wanted to explore the city. We weren’t low on anything, but the power had finally gone out in our building, and she wanted to do more scavenging. She wanted to see what state the rest of the city was in and if she could find anyone in charge. We hadn’t seen police or military vehicles since that first week, so I didn’t think anyone was out there, but we wouldn’t know for sure unless someone found us or we found them.

  I didn’t argue with her about her need to leave, but I was personally leery about going outside the hotel. I was developing cabin fever, no doubt, but not enough to chance going out there with those creatures.

  “I’ll go,” Maddie said, shocking me by saying so.

  I turned and gaped at her.

  “What?” she asked at my bewilderment. “We can’t stay here for the rest of our lives. They can’t run our world. Don’t you want to go home someday?”

  She was right about it all, but I couldn’t believe my little sister was braver than I was. I felt ashamed for not wanting to go. I knew we would have to eventually, but I kept hoping someone would show up to help us or to tell us it was all over before that day came.

  With both of them looking at me expectantly, I nodded my head that I would go as well.

  “We’ll need more weapons,” I said, looking at our sad pile of makeshifts that we hadn’t had to use since the businessman. The array of items was made of knives Duct taped to metal or wood chair legs.

  “I don’t know. I think we’re kind of set, but having said that, if we can find some guns, we’ll be better,” Sadie said, plucking up her favorite weapon. “We’ll need to alter our clothing, though. Your billowing shirt won’t do,” she said pointing to my peasant top.

  “I don’t know that any of my shirts will work, honestly. I’ll look through the clothes we found in the rooms to see if something will fit,” I said, praying there was something I could wear.

  Nothing baggy, nothing that one of those things could easily grab, nothing that would rip, nothing they could bite through—those were the clothes we would need to wear when we left the hotel. An Outdoors Living was two blocks down. The store would have everything we would need, but we had to get to it, first.

  The following day, early in the morning, we snuck out of the hotel. The sun was barely peeking over the tops of the buildings, giving us just enough light to see where we were going. Where that was, I didn’t know. I was following Sadie’s plan. She wanted to go to a friend’s apartment to see if he was alive or not, then by Outdoor Living, and possibly the nearest doctor’s office. The hospital and police department was too far of a walk for our first day.

  We met our first zombie a block from her friend’s apartment. The turned woman was roughly forty-five years old, five-foot-six inches, and a hundred and forty pounds. Her face showed signs that she was no longer alive—dead, blank eyes, a mouth, chin, and neck covered in blood and gunk, but surprisingly her clothes were clean. We’d laughingly told ourselves later that she’d been a clean eater. She came at us with the speed of a linebacker, nearly taking Sadie to the ground. Maddie and I were there in time to knock the woman off her, with Maddie delivering the killing blow. My sister was full of unexpected behavior in those days.

  When Maddie pulled her makeshift spear from the woman’s brain, she gagged at the gore attached to it, then knelt down, grabbed a chunk of the woman’s shirt with a gloved hand, ripped it from the body, and cleaned her weapon.

  “Who are you and what have you done with my baby sister,” I asked, trying to hide my disgust.

  “What? She had to die, and I wasn’t using my clothes to clean the spear.”

  I just shook my head.

  “Thanks, both of you,” Sad
ie said, looking down at the dead woman. “We need to clean that up and get out of here before more come out of hiding.”

  We didn’t have anything to wrap the body in, so I grabbed her feet, Sadie got her arms, and Maddie lifted the lid of the nearest trash bin so that we could toss the body inside.

  The apartment building was empty as far as we could tell. Sadie’s friend didn’t leave any clue as to where he went or what happened to him. His door had been standing open, but the apartment wasn’t a mess. I guessed that he—she never said his name—heard a noise or something, came out to see about it, and that was the last time he’d been home.

  The two clinics we passed looked as if someone had ransacked them. I’m not sure if looters did it or a horde. I couldn’t tell from the mess if anything was missing. We were able to scrounge up a few bandages and other small necessities, but nothing in the way of pain meds or antibiotics.

  Outdoors Living was standing and seemed to have suffered through very little looting. As quietly and quickly as we could, we each grabbed large hiking backpacks and filled them with shoes, clothes, dried food, and anything else we thought would be useful. If one of the zombies grabbed hold of a pack on our way back to the hotel, the person attached to the bag was screwed due to the bulk and weight once it was full, but we had to take the stuff.

  Sadie found a few guns, but none of us had ever fired one, so we found the manuals and prayed we wouldn’t need them. I stored mine in my pack and hefted my spear. So far, our makeshift weapons had come in handy. Since they were familiar, they would be our weapons of choice for the return trip.

  By the time we left the department store, it was past two in the afternoon—much later than we had initially planned to be out.

  We encountered one runner and two walkers on our way back to the hotel. The runner took me off guard that time and did manage to get me to the ground. Thankfully, I fell on the pack and not on my face. My spear went through the kid’s gut. Despite that, he was seconds from eating my face when Sadie and Maddie both brained him from the left side of his head. A blessing, as the spears sent his brain matter flying out the right side and onto the sidewalk and not all over me.

  “Get him off me,” I said, trying to push upward with my hand still around the metal rod of my spear. The movement only sent my hand further into the zombie’s body, allowing him to drop closer to me.

  “Oh, shit, sorry,” Maddie said.

  She and Sadie had been congratulating each other on the kill and had forgotten I was under the poor boy. The guy had barely been eighteen/nineteen years old when he turned. He was a tall, lanky, geeky looking kid, who was probably the sweetest boy you’d ever met before all of this.

  I let go of my spear when they flipped him off me, and I lay there breathing heavily for a minute before moving to get up. I didn’t dare look at the front of the jacket I wore or my gloves. Both items did as the label said they would, as I didn’t feel any of the blood on my bare skin.

  “That was fun,” I said sarcastically and yanked my spear from the boy’s chest.

  “Too much fun. Can you clean up when we get back to the hotel? I don’t want to stay out here much longer,” Sadie said.

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  We were near the hotel when two walkers stumbled upon us. We gave them that nickname because something we didn’t take the time to discover was wrong with them that kept them from being able to run and lunge at us. They could barely stumble in our direction. Needless to say, they were easy to kill. I got one. Sadie got the other while Maddie played lookout.

  I stripped once we were back at the hotel. Maddie immediately set the portable gas stove and began boiling water for us to bathe and for me to soak my blood stained clothes.

  “I’d be okay if we never went back out there again,” I said, sighing happily in relief of discarding all the weight I was carrying.

  “I would too,” Sadie said, “but I don’t think we’ll have much choice. We need to find others…specifically someone who knows what the hell is going on and to find out if there is a vaccine or cure, and how long we can expect to live in this world. Getting off this island at some point will be even better.”

  She was right, of course, but I’d had enough zombies to last me a lifetime.

  Chapter 9

  ~~~Samantha~~~

  —Inside the decontamination room.—

  The next morning after entering Shore Haven, I woke for a little bit. Jason had to help me to the bathroom—which was embarrassing—because I wasn’t walking well on my cut leg. He didn’t seem to mind. I guess he was grateful he didn’t have to put a diaper on me or to put a catheter in me or clean up a urine-soaked bed. None of which would have been pleasant for either of us.

  A woman brought us oatmeal for breakfast, which Jason prepared in the small kitchen area on a hot plate. As he cooked and while we ate, Jason tried to tell me what happened to us the day before and where we were. I was too drowsy to take it all in, and shortly after the meal, I fell asleep. I vaguely remember hearing him chuckle at me before carrying me from the chair he’d propped me in so that I could eat back to the bed.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  —The beginning of the outbreak.—

  Sadie, Maddie, and I went out again the next day. I protested the decision, but Maddie and Sadie overruled me. Brakerville Hospital was our destination that day. The building was rubble when we came upon it. To me, it looked as if it had imploded, but how, I didn’t know.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Sadie said, walking around the edge of a sinkhole that had once been the hospital.

  “What could have caused something like that?” Maddie asked.

  “I have no clue,” Sadie said.

  The two of them examined the hole, while I surveyed the rest of the area, watching for the turned. We’d only encountered a handful of zombies on our way to the hospital. They weren’t easy kills, but we held our own and took them down quickly enough.

  “We should go back to the hotel,” I said after a while.

  “We can’t,” Sadie said. “We haven’t been out here long, and we’ve found out nothing. We should go to the police department next. It’s about a mile that way.” She nodded toward the south side of the island.

  “Let’s go,” Maddie said, heading in the direction Sadie suggested without looking back at either of us.

  I was growing to hate the influence Sadie was having on my little sister. I very much wanted to be one of those people who waited out the zombie apocalypse in hiding, not the let’s face all of this head on and possibly get killed in the process type of person. Cowardly, I knew, but I wasn’t a warrior. I wasn’t a leader. I was a novelist who wrote about such adventures, but never actually wanted to live the experience first hand.

  Rolling my neck to relieve the tension the two of them and our situation was causing, I grunted my resignation before following them.

  Sadie quickly passed Maddie to take the lead in directing us to the police station. I stayed far behind in the rear, not out of choice, but out of the fact that I was the least fit and didn’t move as quickly as they did. That worked in my favor because they were so excited to have another reason to be out of the hotel that they weren’t paying attention to their surroundings.

  Of the three turned that leaped out at Maddie, I took down one with a single lucky shot and another with four random shots. Maddie fought with the last but managed to put her dagger through its skull.

  “You weren’t paying attention to your surroundings,” I said to Maddie when I reached her. My tone wasn’t pleasant, but I did avoid screaming at her.

  “I was,” she argued.

  “No, you weren’t. Neither of you were. That’s how those three were able to sneak up on you. If I hadn’t been back there looking, you’d be dead.” That probably wasn’t true, but I was scared. I could’ve lost my sister at that moment, and I was transferring my fear into anger.

  “Don’t be so overly dramatic,” Maddie said in her best ‘annoyed little sister’ voice
. “I could have handled them. You two were nearby.”

  “You still need to be more aware of what’s around you,” I said, walking past her and Sadie.

  I continued to walk slowly and tried to be even more conscious of the world. To my relief, we didn’t encounter another turned until we reached the police station.

  A horde didn’t surround the station, but there were more milling about in front of the building than I was comfortable with approaching. Their numbers also told me that there probably wasn’t anyone inside to help us. If they were, they’d have surely already taken out the zombies.

  Sadie had said as we walked the island that she thought their numbers were decreasing as time passed, but as I didn’t know how many people lived in the city or how large the hordes had been in the beginning, I couldn’t say. I did know that one of those things was one too many for me.

  “Well, you wanted to see the police station. There it is. What do you want to do now?” I asked Sadie, not bothering to hide my sarcasm.

  “I want to go in, that’s what I want to do.”

  “Of course you do,” I said before letting out a long, silent sigh.

  “Where’s your sense of fun,” Maddie asked, nudging me to follow Sadie.

  “I lost it the day we saw that turned woman inside the art gallery,” I muttered, wondering if I was going to be able to keep my sister safe.

  I understood Sadie’s need for information. Her need to know what happened, why it happened, and how long it would last. I also got her need to find other people. I don’t know if I could live the rest of my life with only the two of them for company. Sadie must feel even more like an outsider considering she didn’t have family with her.

  Her desire for answers, though, was going to get us killed if she kept running off half-cocked as she was. I didn’t think my way of dealing with things—the hide in the hotel until everything was all over way—was better, but it was less risky, especially if she was right, and the hordes were decreasing. If we’d stayed inside another week or so, we’d probably be able to wander about the island without encountering a single zombie.