Call Me Zombie: Volume I: Rose
Page 20
I live for fear. Fear wakes me at slightest noise. Fear hides whenever I see another human. Fear forces drink in my mouth and food down my throat. Fear steals what it needs, and it leaves undetected.
Fear stops me from walking into every group of zombies I see with my arms wide open.
I don’t want to stay alive, but I am too much a coward to die.
In the darkest nights, when the moon is new and black, and the stars are covered in clouds, I think about putting my gun to my temple and pulling the trigger. I feel the kiss of cold metal against my head, a caress. I could do it so easily.
Mom believed in God. Maybe she’s at peace, and Heaven is where you see all your loved ones, but even that idea doesn’t give me the courage to put my pistol to my head and pull the trigger.
I cannot face her, knowing she killed herself because she couldn’t bear to look at me anymore. I cannot face Penny, knowing that if I had done as I was told, had not stopped to stare at a dead person and wonder whether she is alive, Penny would be alive.
The ghosts of my past are not solid yet, but they will be when I die. They will torment me forever.
So fear keeps me alive. But I do not recover.
Rose
I’m in Arkansas when I run into some of the Hunters.
My car, a little Camry I found stranded on the side of the road a few miles outside of Chinook, shudders to a halt a few miles from the nearest town, and the vehicles strewn over the road like a giant child’s play toys won’t start, no matter how much I coax them.
I’m walking along the side of the road, constantly scanning, the shoulder, the road, forward and back, nearly rotating completely. A million terrible things could happen to me here.
I’m way too exposed. People like Jake would snap me up faster than an alligator at feeding time. A quick snatch, and I’d be gone. They would swallow me up before I could do anything to defend myself.
Of course, zombies hang out near roadways sometimes too, looking for stranded motorists. No one knows for sure, but we think that they can smell blood. They always end up at crash scenes. I’ve driven by dozens, cars smashed into trees, and the hovering, shuffling figures surrounding them.
Every time I saw one, I gunned the engine and looked ahead until I was sure I couldn’t see them anymore.
Malia would have made us stop and rescue whoever was in that car. Malia wouldn’t have thought twice about stopping.
But she’s dead, and I have things to do.
Jake’s face flashes across my mind.
I have bigger monsters to fight.
Still, I always make sure never to look at the crash scenes as I drive by. And I can’t stop from hearing her voice, and Mason’s, talking about the importance of doing whatever we can, because what’s the point otherwise?
I feel reckless, dangerous. The flame inside my chest has only been getting brighter since I got out of the car. It’s like the more my body has to expend itself, the more that fire flares inside me, lighting me up from the inside out.
I’m on tenterhooks, on the edge of something that will destroy me, and in a moment it will happen, something will push me over the edge and I’ll be gone. If I stop to let it in, I won’t get up.
So even though it’s almost a death wish to walk as I do, where anyone can see me, where the zombies lurk and the Jackals play, I secretly hope for a car engine.
He’ll stop his truck. Lean over to say something about how a pretty girl shouldn’t be out here all alone.
And then I’ll strike. I’ll rip him open with my knife, and the bright red of his blood will splatter across my face, and I’ll smell its salty wetness and be glad that I made it out of the Hunters, glad that I managed to survive when Malia and Mason, who are so much better than me, who would have stopped for the dozens of people I left, died screaming.
My hands might finally stop shaking.
“Rogue, hey!”
A bald man leans across the front of the car, squinting at me in the midday sun. It takes me a moment before I can remember his name.
“Mikey!.” I try to smile, but I don’t think it goes well, judging by the confused and slightly fearful expression on his face.
“Hey, you need a ride? I was just going into Texarkana for supplies. I’m so glad you’re okay!”
I look at him, then at the back of his car. It’s a Chevy Suburban, big and clunky, and there is plenty of room in the backseat for someone to hide. I can’t tell if anyone else is inside.
He could be with Jake and his friends. He could have led them to us. I always liked Mikey, but nothing is certain anymore.
Before I can decline, the back window rolls down, and a dark head pokes itself out.
“Rogue, I’m so glad to see you!” Lucia’s got hair that’s ragged from not being washed, stiff with sweat and sticking up on her head. It makes her look dangerous, although that could be the split lip and the black eye. She got out, but she had to fight.
Unlike Mikey, Lucia bears the marks of Jake. In the hollowness of her cheeks. In the hint of sadness behind her sparkling brown eyes.
And it’s for her that I step into the car. For the night we spent talking about boys and eating junk food. For the times that she shot better than I did. For Malia, who always went out of her way to include Lucia in every assignment, every meeting, because she didn’t let Lucia’s age hold her back from helping us.
The thought of Malia conjures up a million images. Her curls, turned to gold in the sun, grinning at me and calling me ‘Bitch,’ lecturing me the first time we met, all-knowing and hopelessly pretentious. She saw me and brought me into them without even wondering at my intentions.
She knew I needed them desperately, and now she is dead, and I am afraid that my good memories will fall apart beneath the ones of her afraid and bleeding and reaching out for Mason over his torn out eyes, spitting defiance turned to terror.
We thought that we could stay together and be family and that would make it worth it, but it’s not, we’re dying, and I want to be alone so badly that I consider leaping from the car. “Rogue,” Lucia says, hugging me so tightly that my ribs feel like they’ll crack. “I thought you were dead.”
“So did I,” I say, even though I haven’t been in real danger since that day. Even though I’ve been scavenging for food and driving north and avoiding zombies and hunters with ease. Even though I’m not nearly as exhausted as I was when I was at the camp, and every day and night was spent living. The waking hours so important that we chose to put a small priority on the sleeping ones.
I can’t fall apart in front of her; I can’t let her see me like this. Maybe all of this is nothing, but she doesn’t need to know that, she’s got bruises necklacing her neck and I can feel her ribs through her clothes, and she’s going to break, and I can’t make her break, too.
If I’m going to break, I’m not going to take anyone down with me.
I owe Malia that.
“How’d you guys end up here?”
From the front seat, Mikey answers, “Me and Lucia hooked up with Perce, Tavi, and Brent before we ran out. Heard something about a compound up here, kind of like what Malia and Mason had going. So we headed up.”
“You found it? What is it?”
“It’s a ways North, up in the middle of nowhere, some kind of ranch with food, livestock, chickens--“Lucia interjects. “There’s no name for them, they’re just this group of kids led by this guy, Ryan, who thinks he’s God’s gift.” She snorts, tapping her hand against her thigh in an angry rhythm. “Ryan directs people into raids, collecting supplies, that kind of thing. Mikey and I are on supply duty, for now.”
I know why she’s so grumpy about Ryan. Even though Lucia was thirteen, Malia knew better than to put her on something as trivial as supply duty.
I want to ask about Perce, whether he’s okay or not, whether he misses his two best friends, whether he’s tried to find me, chased after me like he did before, whether or not he hates me for not chasing after him.
My mind goes further back, to Ben before I left, the noises from the tent that told me he was too far gone, even though I still refused to admit it. The run that led to Malia, smiling at me in a church that I had gone to only to yell and scream and rage, because that was all I had left.
“I can’t go back with you,” the words come out of me even though I don’t want them to.
But it’s better this way. I’ve slipped away in the night too many times and I can’t do it again, can’t steal away. I have to face it, face them, face all the pain I will cause by leaving.
“What?” Lucia asks, half-laughing. She thinks I’m joking.
“I can’t come back with you guys. I just need a ride into town. I’ll get a car and head out.”
“What do you mean? You’re welcome to stay with us! You’re one of us,” this comes from Mikey, who half twists in the front seat to look at us.
I turn my gaze to the window, watching the town appear, unfurled on the flat ground, stop signs and stoplights and old, broken down bungalows. It’s a tiny town, more of a way station than anything else.
The road is littered with abandoned cars, so that the car has to weave its way through them. The path is too direct, too easily navigable, for it to be anything but the military that moved the cars out of the way.
I wonder what would have happened if I’d taken my family to them, let them deal with Ben’s brokenness and addiction and ability to blame everyone but himself for what went wrong in his life. They would have beaten the drugs right out of him.
Or they would have made it worse. I remember Ben’s whispered words to Turk, their huddled conversations before he left to be with them, always about nights and cans and blades and a sinister note that made me struggle not to run at the sight of Turk’s eyes on me.
Ben may have been twisted by circumstance and drugs and the sense that the entire world was falling apart, but there are times that I think he was always going to become someone to hide from in the dark.
It doesn’t matter now. I focus on the convenience store that Mikey is pulling into
Mikey, Lucia and I get out of the car. I’m fixing my gaze on the ground, not ready to leave yet. I still need to get some supplies before I leave—I’ve left most of my food in the last car, carrying only canned sausages and bottled water in my backpack, and I need to put as much as I can in whichever car is taking me further north
I need jackets too, because winter is approaching and I don’t know which towns have electricity anymore, which ones are close enough to the bases that they can mooch off the grid and stay out of sight.
Mason and Perce were so lucky to find Heavenly Dreams; I wonder if there wasn’t more to their story than stumbling on it in the dark.
I guess it doesn’t matter now.
We all walk into the store, and after checking to make sure it’s clear, I grab what I can. I think this is the only convenience store in the town, which means that there isn’t much left, but I find a case of bottled water buried beneath a hat rack boasting baseball caps with camouflage bills.
I pick up the case and head out. I want to look around for more, but I need to start looking for a car. I don’t want them to try to talk me into staying again.
I don’t want them to know how far gone I am.
As I start to head out, I hear the rumble of an engine, and I set the case back on the floor, bursting through the doors. If it’s Jake, he’s dead.
It’s not Jake. It’s a boy, around my age. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a green t-shirt with “Kiss Me! I’m Irish!” written across the front in white. His curly hair is sticking out in tufts, like he’s been running his hands through it, and I can see smears of red on his forearms. From hunting or worse, I don’t want to know.
But he’s passed out, across the front seat of a car that’s still running, cradling a can of Red Bull like a small child. He must have fallen asleep as soon as he pulled up.
Perfect.
I don’t have a lot of time. Lucia is going to come out at any second and ask me to stay. And I can’t. I can’t stay with her and go back to another camp, another place where the importance is on living and dying with the people you love, where no one acknowledges how it will end in blood, with us more broken than we would be had we just been brave enough to be alone.
I didn’t realize how much I loved Mason and Malia until they were dead in front of me, and the pain of that moment is raw and real and it is the only thing that has kept me alive, the only lesson that I can allow myself to learn, that the ones you love will hurt you in the most brutal ways, over and over again, ripping at you and leaving scar after scar until there will be a time when you cannot survive.
I cannot let someone hurt me like that again.
So I walk up to the car, putting on my best smile, hoping that the boy isn’t gay or otherwise uninterested in me. I’m not pretty—I’m dirty, my dark hair is almost certainly a matted rat’s nest on top of my head, and my clothes are covered in dirt and sweat. But maybe he’ll just be so surprised to see a girl that he won’t realize I’m stealing his car until it’s too late.
I saunter up to the window and rap on it smartly, and he startles awake, looking at me with wide-eyed amazement. His eyes are big and blue-green, and he looks so young.
Then he pulls out his gun and points it at me, and he looks older.
“Get away from me,” he says, hands steady, eyes squarely determined. Not a hint of attraction or nervousness, like he’s done this before and he won’t hesitate.
I start to say something flirtatious, some smart-ass comment that Malia would have gotten away with.
Malia. If Malia were here, we’d have the car and the guy’s undying devotion in five minutes. She has that effect on people, women and men. It’s part of what made her such a great leader. You sort of fall in love with her.
Malia. My chest tightens, delivering shocks up my neck. Their faces scroll across my face like end credits, over and over. Malia. Mason. Mom. Jonathan. Ben. Gone, gone, gone. It’s over.
I can’t breathe. I stumble backward as though struck, grabbing onto the gas kiosk for support. I haven’t felt like this in a while, like everything is rising up and threatening to swallow me. I was moving, doing fine, my anger keeping me alive and moving fast enough to think only of that. And now I am stopped and he is in my way, and Lucia and Mikey will come out at any second, and I can’t do this. I can’t steal this car and I can’t stop and I can’t move I can’t I can’t I can’t.
He’s getting out of the car now, turning it off, gun still in hand. He steps close enough that I can see the freckles on his nose, frowning at me like I’m about to break apart in front of him.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asks, and there is enough genuine concern in his voice that I’m already turning to walk away, deciding that I’d rather take my chances on an abandoned car than go through this again, when Lucia and Mikey come out of the store, screaming at me to get in the car.
“Get in the car, now,” Lucia yells, and she looks more scared than I’ve ever seen her, hands scrabbling at the door, pulling herself in just as someone in a red and black shirt comes lumbering out of the doors.
Even from here, I know who he is. It’s the only reason why I’m sprinting around Lucia and Mikey’s car, where Mikey has locked the door and is frantically trying to start it, turning the key in the ignition over and over, until it roars to life.
The man pounds on the door, laughing, holding a gun in his other hand, pointing it at the window where Lucia cowers.
Behind him, three others have come out, surrounding the car. They’re too focused on Lucia and Mikey to have noticed me yet, or the boy next to me.
But I’ve noticed them. And the guy in the checkered shirt is t
oo familiar, his laugh too full of that same arrogance and diabolical lust, that it can’t be anyone else but him.
And so instead of hiding, of driving off in the car and leaving them all behind, I pull out the gun holstered at my belt and point it at him, all the shaking from earlier gone.
The gun shoots five bullets per clip, and I only have one extra clip on my belt. But I don’t care. I don’t care I don’t care and Malia is next to me, laughing as we take out the line of zombies on the rooftop from the first day, Mason is teasing me about Perce while I help him cook, and they are dead, dead for trying to help, dead for keeping people human, dead for nothing because we all scattered anyway. And I am not good enough or noble enough to try to save what they built, but I can at least avenge them.
I feel the same fire that crackled in me before explode into being, flaring up inside of me, and I fire one shot for each of them. In seconds, they are all down on the ground, blood splattered against the gray concrete.
I can hear the boy’s shallow breathing next to me, but I don’t have time to worry about him. I don’t have time to wonder if he’s thinking about joining me or killing me or running away. There is just them, and me, and the one that I shot in the stomach instead of the face because it hurts more, whose gun I’m kicking out of his hand as I kneel next to him, running my hand along his throat and smiling, because I won, and he will die here and alone and cold and in pain, and there is nothing he can do.
“Jake,” I say. “Remember me?”
His eyes meet mine, and they widen in recognition. He’s breathing quickly and shallowly, taking in his breath as best as he can, even though his guts are spilling out on the ground next to him.
He’ll die in hours, in agony. Good.
His eyes flicker in pain, fear, and recognition, but it isn’t enough. He isn’t enough. He isn’t scared enough or in enough pain and why is he smiling, like he’s still going to win?
He’s dying and I’m alive, and he’s never going to hurt anyone else, he’s gone. He’s dust. He’s dead.
“You are dead.” And he smiles like I’ve done something wonderful, and I’m afraid now, trying not to show it, because he is everything I have feared since that day, the confrontation I craved and fled from at the same time, the dissatisfaction that even killing him would not stop him. He would just come back, over and over, in one person after another, the zombie who can’t stay dead.