by Brown, TW
Kevin didn’t say a word. There wasn’t really anything to say. He looked at the herd that packed the breadth of the highway up ahead. Even from as far away as they were, he could hear them moaning and crying. There was one other noise under it all. It took him a moment to realize what he was hearing.
“The snow,” Kevin whispered.
“What?” Willa asked as she shouldered her pack and buckled the weapon-laden webbed belt around her slender waist.
For some reason, Kevin found that simple action amazingly sexy. He had to shake off the inappropriate thoughts starting to bloom involving her wearing only that belt dripping with blades and a few more exotic hand-to-hand items.
“You can hear them walking though the snow,” Kevin said with a nod towards the approaching mob.
Willa tilted her head slightly and peeled back her tight-fitting knit cap. With one finger, she tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear. Kevin couldn’t help but stare.
“Hey,” Willa said with a big smile, “you’re right.” She tugged the hat back down. “Not much gets past you does it?”
There were a few seconds of silence between them as Kevin struggled to banish the thoughts in his head. The only sounds carrying on the cold winter breeze came from the approaching wall of undead. He shook his head clear and focused on the situation…and Aleah.
“The best choice for us would be to head north. The river should be that way. If we can come across a bridge at any point, I say we take the opportunity to make the move.”
“You lead the way,” Kevin nodded in agreement.
The rest of the day was spent in relative silence. It didn’t seem that the herd saw them. If they did, they chose not to pursue. The zombies they did encounter were usually singles or small groups. Kevin continued to insist that they only engage the ones that took an active interest in them.
“You ain’t worried about bringing a bunch of them with you on our heels?” Willa asked at one point.
“We have so many places we will be ducking in and out of that I just don’t see the need for the waste of energy.”
At one point, just after they had crossed an open field and began winding through a scattering of trees, Willa grabbed Kevin’s shoulder and motioned for him to keep quiet. She swung a crossbow off her shoulder and loaded a bolt, bringing the weapon up and tracking something in the distance. He looked around for what she might be taking aim. All he saw was snow…and more snow.
With a thrum and a hiss, there was a puff of snow about twenty yards away. Willa clapped her hands and bounded off to retrieve her prize. Reaching down, she stood and waved a plump rabbit in the air. Five more times that day the ritual was repeated. Four of those times resulted in a dead rabbit.
As it began to grow dark and the first snowflakes of the evening began to fall, Kevin spotted the shadows indicating a scattering of residences. He veered off course, searching for the first intact home.
Luck was with them as the very first home they came to looked to have all its windows and doors. As an added bonus, the picket fence surrounding the front yard was in excellent condition. At first, Kevin thought the residents might still remain. He discovered that he was only partially correct as he drew close enough to see the large front window. It was smeared with filth, a clear indication that a zombie (or two) was inside.
“Let’s go around back,” Kevin whispered when he came to a stop across the street from the two-story home.
“You see something?” Willa let her crossbow slip down her shoulder and into her hands.
“Nope.” Kevin shielded his face with his hands to cut back the glare. “But I don’t want our tracks to advertise where we went. It’s bad enough that anybody who wanted to could follow us, but if we circle around to the back of the house and make tracks to each of the five houses in this little area it will help me relax.”
“You are something else,” Willa said appreciatively.
Kevin headed around the side of the house, his face turned away to hide the blush and the grin. All his life, he had been the awkward one…the geek…the nerd. Now, he had the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen waiting for him back where he currently called home while he was out in the middle of nowhere with another very pretty woman who lavished him with compliments and openly flirted with him. Not to mention the fact that he’d had to fend off the advances of a teenaged high school cheerleader that he’d saved from a horrific situation.
It took them about a half hour, but Willa did exactly as he asked, and they eventually had tracks all over the place; each house in the area had multiple sets of them leading to and from.
When it came time, Kevin pulled a small case from his own bag and made short work of the locked door. He drew his machete and nodded for Willa to open the door. Slowly and cautiously, so as to make as little noise as possible, she turned the knob and pushed it open. There was a tearing sound as the weather seal and the door, gummed together from the combination of not being used for months during the hot summer and now this freezing winter, separated. Then…the metallic rattle as the door chain reached its end and kept the door fast—open no more than a few inches.
A second later, the stench of rot and death hit them both square in the face. Kevin staggered back and shook his head, but Willa stumbled as if struck by something physical. The sounds of her retching were met by a low moan from the other side of the door.
Casting a glance back, he paused only long enough to be certain that the nausea was the worst of his travelling companion’s problems before throwing his shoulder into the door. The tiny links of chain tore free, and Kevin found himself just inside a main entry hall. The hardwood floor was stained with what had to most likely be blood. Still, it was the lone finger with the ring still on it that drew his focus.
He only had an instant to consider the solitary digit when the torso of a small child pulled itself around the corner at the end of the hallway. Close behind was what Kevin first mistook for a middle-aged man. However, as he took a step forward and raised his weapon, he realized that it was, in fact, a woman with a crew cut.
With a quick swing, he buried the blade deep into the head of the zombie his mind had named Annie Lennox. Allowing Annie’s weight to act in his favor, he stepped aside and yanked up to free his weapon. The creeping child was already at his boots by the time he recovered and was ready to swing again. It was probably the combination of Willa’s violent heaving just outside the door, the echoes of bodies crashing to the floor, and the mewling of the creeper at his feet. In any case, Kevin never heard the zombie that had staggered down the stairs behind him and to his right.
A cold hand brushed Kevin’s face, knocking his goggles cockeyed. Startled, Kevin threw his body down the hallway, landing on his shoulder and rolling up to his knees in what had to be one of the biggest kitchens he had ever seen. It also brought him face-to-face with a toddler-sized zombie.
Quickly shoving his goggles out of the way—he would not have the time needed to take off his gloves and make sure they didn’t have anything on them that might get into his eyes and possibly infect him—Kevin shoved the toddler away with a strong forearm. It slid across the grimy floor and slammed into a very solid cabinet door. Pulling his Ka-Bar from its sheath, he spun and found the approaching zombie that had snuck up on him standing in the hallway with its head cocked to one side as if considering him and the scene at its feet.
There it is again, Kevin’s mind screamed. Once more he was faced with a child-zombie that seemed to be thinking. Its expression was still slack and void of emotion, but its body language was sending a very different story. It kept its distance just over an arm’s length away and tilted its head one way and then another in jerky fits.
The thumping of tiny feet made him glance back into the kitchen just in time to see the toddler take quick—for a zombie anyways—steps in his direction and reach for him with chubby, gray-green hands. With a backhand swing, Kevin brought the Ka-Bar around and plunged it into the left eye.
He turned back to the ten- or twelve-year-old girl in the hall. It hadn’t moved and continued to study him. Had he been a second quicker, he would have been able to possibly wave Willa off as she came from behind and drove a spike-fisted hand into the back of the zombie’s head.
“Crap,” Kevin sighed, his shoulders slumping.
“Umm…you’re welcome?” Willa planted a booted foot in the zombie’s back and yanked her gloved hand free.
Kevin explained how he’d noticed peculiar behavior from some of the child-aged zombies. He watched her face closely for any signs that she might think he was crazy. So far, his theories hadn’t been too warmly accepted by any of his group; that included his girlfriend Aleah who had been present for one such encounter. Willa’s face remained impassive the entire time. After he finished by telling her that the zombie in the hallway she’d just put down was exhibiting similar signs, and that he would have liked to find a way to observe it for a bit before putting something through its skull, she shrugged and nodded.
“You are probably one of the smartest people I have ever met. If you say zombies are acting weird then who am I to say otherwise.” Willa wiped off her gear with a dusty curtain.
Together, they searched the house for signs of any other nasty surprises. It was in an upstairs bedroom where they found a fresh horror. In a small bedroom, a little child looked to have wasted away to almost nothing.
“What the…” Willa’s voice faded, and for the first time, Kevin saw a hint of real vulnerability in the woman.
Entering the room, Kevin was curious how this person could possibly have existed in the same house as the horrors downstairs. Not to mention that one of them had actually been up here and caught him by surprise.
Checking the desiccated corpse, he noticed a few things; first, the child was a girl, and second, the child was practically hairless. He noticed a pink diary sitting on the nightstand and picked it up.
After thumbing through a few pages, he set the book back down. “Cancer.”
“Huh?”
“She had cancer.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I.” Kevin gave the room one more look.
“Yeah…” Willa let that word hang for a moment before continuing. “But I think we don’t get it on different levels.”
“I guess I am trying to figure out why the zombies didn’t touch her.” Kevin walked back out to the hallway and spent a few minutes wandering from room to room. He opened drawers and closets, but could not seem to find anything that satisfied him. He was several minutes in to his search when he realized that Willa was nowhere to be seen.
“Willa?”
“In here,” a voice drifted from the dead girl’s bedroom.
Kevin didn’t want to go back in the room. He’d become accustomed to the walking dead. He’d seen plenty of death in the past several months. What he didn’t like was the emaciated look of the girl in the bed; the fact that she had died a slow lingering death hurt him down to his soul.
“I’m going downstairs to make sure everything is as secure as we can make it for the night,” he called over his shoulder.
“Her name was Linda.” Willa stepped out of the room holding the diary. “Her family refused to go to the area FEMA shelter because they wouldn’t take her in due to her condition. It started with her dad.”
Kevin paused for a moment, and then continued on down the stairs. He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to know any more about this girl’s suffering. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was get back on the road and return home to his group. He wanted to bring Valarie her medication so that she would stop seeing people who weren’t there. He wanted Aleah to hold him and tell him it would be okay…even though it would never really be okay.
As the shadows grew into an inky blackness the two sat in the bathroom where the rabbits roasted over an open flame in the tub. Willa let Kevin prepare the meal as she seemed unable to take her nose out of the diary. He only burned it a little.
They ate in silence and when he was finished, Kevin climbed inside his sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep. The dreams came in a torrent. Every face seemed to be screaming silently in pain.
Cary.
Mike.
Darrin.
His only friends in the world and the group he had left Virginia Beach with on a mission to survive the zombie apocalypse. Those faces gave way to Ruth and Angela Bergman. Shaw and his band of lunatics. The deranged teacher, Mr. Abernathy.
His sister.
Valarie.
His sister.
Valarie.
***
“Wake up,” a sweet voice whispered in his ear.
“Aleah?” Kevin rolled over and pulled the blurry figure close, his mouth seeking hers.
“Open your eyes, Romeo,” Willa snapped, shoving him back.
Kevin jolted awake. A wave of embarrassment made his face burn and his hands tingle. He tried to apologize, but not one word out of his mouth was understandable.
“Just relax,” Willa chuckled. “You didn’t do nothing wrong. But I need your ass awake right now.”
“What is it?” Kevin wanted to climb out of his sleeping bag, but certain…physiological responses made that an embarrassing proposition at the present time.
“Lots of noise outside.”
“Like zombie herd noise?”
“Like living people on the run and more living people chasing them.”
Kevin wiped the sleep from his eyes and the slight trace of drool from his chin as he struggled to fully awaken. His body ached all over, and it took him a while to realize why. He hadn’t just been out for a walk…he’d been slogging through almost knee-deep snow all day the previous day.
As he went through the ritual of packing up his gear, Willa kept pacing. As he picked up his pack, she almost seemed to be ready to run for the door. He hadn’t ever seen her this rattled. Of course, he had to admit that he didn’t know the woman all that well to begin with.
“Something bad was happening out there. I heard crying…definitely crying,” Willa insisted.
“Okay,” Kevin nodded, “but what is all this about?” He made a gesture with his hands that encompassed Willa.
“I don’t know what all you’ve seen out in the world since this happened…but there are some pretty bad people out there now that nobody is making folks behave.”
“I’ve seen my share of bad.”
“Yeah…but things have been happening to women that I don’t think you can really appreciate. You asked why that outfit I was with just had women? It’s because over half of us have been victimized in one way or another by men…often groups of men.”
Kevin felt a slight twist in his gut. He’d saved one young lady from an unimaginable situation and killed her captor in a rather violent fashion. He still had nightmares about it. However, it was in this moment that a wave of guilt washed over him. His guilt had not been for what Heather, the young woman he rescued, had endured. Rather, it was for his taking of a human life.
“Well I won’t let anything happen to you as long as I am still breathing,” Kevin vowed. It was as much to himself as it was to the normally strong woman who now stood before him seeming more like a frightened child.
Willa appeared to consider Kevin for a moment with a different eye than he was accustomed. A sad look clouded her expression and she shook her head. “That’s sweet, Kevin, but you’re just one person. There is a whole world out there…and a lot of really bad people are out there in it.”
“But you can’t believe that,” Kevin insisted.
“I can…and I do.”
“Then what are we fighting to stay alive for?”
“It’s in our nature…most of us anyways. Lots of folks took the easy way out a long time ago.”
“So you’re telling me that all that’s left out there in the world are monsters…rapists…”
“Not all,” Willa said with a sad smile. “There are a few men like you out there. However…most of
the good guys died early on trying to save everybody around them. The cowards hid and waited for a world that they could poke their heads out into and finally crawl out from under their rocks.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
“You aren’t a woman…a girl…or a child.”
Kevin considered that statement and then held a hand out to Willa. She took it and they headed out the back door of the house and listened to the stillness that was only interrupted by the occasional sounds of branches bending under the weight of the snow.
“Well whoever came through seems to have taken no notice of our tracks or these houses,” Kevin whispered. “Let’s get moving.”
Together, they trudged out into the snow. By midday, they had discovered a series of tracks that wove in and out of the trees. They also discovered that their bodies could not endure much more. Between the exposure to the cold and the strain placed on the body involved in walking through the knee deep powder, the pair were exhausted beyond the ability to continue. For Kevin, this would simply not do; Valarie was waiting. She needed him to keep moving.
“We need to find a residential area,” Kevin announced as he handed his canteen to Willa.
“You want to make camp this early?”
“No. We need to find snowshoes, skis…anything. Otherwise we are not going to make it.”
Kevin sought out the highest ground he could find and searched. The biggest problem was one that he had noticed during the journey to Newark from the golf course compound where his friends waited. Before the world had been plunged into darkness, most buildings gave off heat. That caused the snow to melt. Now…buildings were harder to see in this glaring white landscape. They were buried under snow just like everything else.
It took him a while, but eventually he found what he was looking for and led the way. The monotone colors of the landscape played tricks with distance and it ended up being much farther than it initially looked. To add to the frustration, it was well to the south of them, taking him away from his ultimate destination.