The Human Spring
David Hollingsworth
Cover: Anthony Salazar
Copyright © 2018 David Hollingsworth
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1727551435
ISBN-13: 978-1727551433
To my wonderful girlfriend, parents, sister, and friends, thank you. Thank you for the support you’ve given me and the growth you’ve enabled in me over the years. There are pieces of all of you in this story, and I mean that in the best way possible. Every reader who ever finds something in this book that resonates with them will have you to thank for playing a part in it.
Also, a special thank you to Kat, Paisley, Tony, Monica, Sandi, and everyone else who ever gave me feedback on various drafts of this novel. They say that writing is a solitary activity, and it is, but to produce something worth reading you need helpful, insightful people on your team. Y’all gave me so much, and I can’t thank you enough.
Finally, shout out to everyone working hard just to get by in this wild, difficult, beautiful thing called life. Thank you for taking the time to read my book. I hope, more than anything, that it resonates with you in a way that feels meaningful.
“Eyes up to the sky
she sighs, ‘I need nobody’
true indeed, sistah, but you still need everybody
because we hardly know ourselves if we know nobody else
and only in our loneliness can home become a hell
exhale
the cloud in the loudest form of silence
watches as it rises like suns over horizons”
- Blue Scholars
DAY 1
MONDAY, APRIL 3rd
Ehsan’s heart raced. He clutched his weapon, a silver fiberglass shovel, with a life or death grip. “Ehsan, to your left!” his sister Fatima shouted as she raised her knife, ready to strike. The two stood on the front porch of a Spanish-colonial style house with faded peach-colored paint in the middle of the suburbs. Zombies littered the yard, which sloped upward toward the street in front of the house.
His stomach in knots, Ehsan turned to his left and swung his shovel as hard as he could, driving it into the neck of the gaunt zombie standing in front of him. It crumpled to the ground. Ehsan looked past the fallen zombie to see two more right after it, and another dozen or so a couple yards behind those two. Far too many for he and his sister to take out with so little room to maneuver.
“We need to get out of here,” Fatima declared, removing her knife from a zombie’s skull.
“Really? I thought we could stay here, maybe take another nap or something,” Ehsan joked. He pushed away one of the two approaching zombies with the hilt of his shovel, then swung at the other.
“Not the time, Ehsan.” Ehsan could sense Fatima’s eye-roll from her tone of voice. “There, by the driveway!” Ehsan looked to the left. A sizable gap separated the zombies approaching them. If they charged as fast as they could, they could make it through.
“Okay, let’s do it.” Ehsan took a deep breath and exhaled. He crouched down. The two sprinted. His legs burned as he felt the protein bar and bag of almonds in his pockets rattle around as he moved. He used his shovel only when he needed to push away zombies that came too close.
Halfway up the driveway he glanced over his shoulder to confirm Fatima still followed him. He saw her from the corner of his eye. He returned his attention to the top of the driveway. The gap between the zombies started to close. Ehsan picked up the pace. He swore he could feel his blood pumping through his veins. At the top of the driveway stood one last zombie, directly in their path. Ehsan held his shovel in front of him and pushed into the zombie’s chest, causing it to fall onto its back, then attacked its right knee so it couldn’t get up. He sprinted a few more feet to make sure he had cleared the swarm. He heard his sister’s shoes hit the concrete behind him.
Ehsan slowed his pace from a sprint to a jog. He scanned the street and saw no zombies beyond the front yard, where they had shown up sometime early in the morning while Fatima and Ehsan slept inside. When Ehsan and Fatima awoke they’d seen the group gathering outside, perhaps attracted by a stray raccoon or squirrel. Knowing these sorts of groups took days to disperse, and often only got bigger, they’d decided to risk rushing through to avoid getting trapped inside the house.
The two slowed their pace from jogging to powerwalking, knowing the zombies couldn’t catch up with them at this distance. Those in the yard continued to pursue Ehsan and Fatima in vain, grunting impotently as their meals escaped. Ehsan gasped for air as he slowed down, finally able to catch his breath. As he stood hunched over with his hands on his knees, he thought about how profoundly terrifying the zombies had been when society first fell. For the first few weeks he couldn’t see one without almost fainting. During the approximate year or so since, however, they gradually transformed from terror to nuisance. Though hordes like the one that took down their last shelter weeks ago still horrified him, small groups only served to put him on guard.
Ehsan saw no zombies on the rest of the street. They stood in the middle of a suburban labyrinth. Most of the grass and plants in the front yards had withered away under the harsh California sun. The plants suited for the desert, however, thrived. Among the sun-worn houses, dust-covered cars, and emaciated front yards, the desert succulents stood as one of the few remnants of life.
Ehsan and Fatima remained cautious among the empty cars that dotted the street, careful to make sure nothing lurked behind them. Ehsan wanted to ditch the herd behind them for fear of it getting bigger, but his sister made sure they didn’t get careless. They rounded the corner to another street. This street only had two zombies, neither close enough to notice their presence.
“Man, the suburbs are supposed to be the place where people avoid real problems,” Ehsan complained. “We should really have a talk with their homeowner’s association.”
“They wouldn’t take you anyway,” Fatima teased.
Ehsan grinned. “You don’t know that. They’d probably be impressed with my investment portfolio.”
“Investment portfolio? What, like all those Xbox games you had?”
“Excuse me? Playstation games, too,” Ehsan replied with feigned indignation. “I believe in diversifying my investments.”
Fatima rolled her eyes playfully and looked over to the closest zombie, which had now noticed them. It stood only about thirty feet away, staggering toward them like someone with too much alcohol in their system. Ehsan felt uneasy whenever he focused too closely on what any given zombie looked like, not wanting to be reminded they’d once been human. When they faced only one, and his adrenaline wasn’t rushing, it was hard not to think about. He glanced over only long enough to see its approximate size. Just over five feet tall.
“We ought to take it out now, just in case,” Fatima decided. She marched over to meet it.
Ehsan followed his sister’s lead. Whenever they encountered one by itself their usual strategy called for Ehsan to take it out, as his shovel had a greater range. Fatima stood right next to him, ready with her knife in case anything went wrong. Fortunately, nothing did this time. Ehsan took it out with a few good swings to the neck. The wet crunching sound of the impact still made Ehsan grimace, even after all the dozens of zombies he had taken out since the outbreak began.
“We should get the other one, too,” Fatima decided as the other walked toward them. This one had been only a kid before, but it didn’t matter. It was best to take out stray zombies if possible, as no one could ever know where these strays might show up later, and unlike bigger groups, there wasn’t much risk in picking off individuals or small groups. In the earlier days of the outbreak, Ehsan and Fatima had seen the human cost of leaving them standing.
&
nbsp; The two walked up to dispose of the zombie, moving around an inert brown station wagon to do so. Ehsan averted his eyes, trying harder than usual to avoid observing any details about what it had looked like during its life. As he always did with child zombies, Ehsan closed his eyes right before the impact. He opened them a split second later to see it crumple to the ground, its head only attached by a few sinewy fibers to the rest of its body. He cringed.
“I still hate doing that,” Fatima murmured.
“Yeah. Me too.”
They kept walking. Ehsan looked back in the direction toward the house they’d occupied only a few minutes prior. “Do you think we should go back and take care of the group in front of the house? Now that we have some distance, maybe we can lure them away one by one and take them out. Could save us some trouble later.”
Fatima crossed her arms and rubbed her chin, a habit of hers when making tough decisions. “I think not. A group that big would be risky to take out by ourselves. Even if we were smart about it, something could go wrong.”
Ehsan nodded. “You’re probably right.” He looked in the direction from which they came one last time. “Guess we should put some distance between us and them.”
Fatima nodded in return. The two continued walking. Throughout the next few streets they encountered a total of six more zombies, each of which they disposed of individually.
“He must have been a football player when he was alive,” Fatima remarked as they finished taking out a particularly broad-shouldered, thick-necked zombie. Ehsan had to attack its legs and pin it with his shovel while Fatima stabbed it in the head. Ehsan was glad they encountered this one alone and not in the large group they’d escaped earlier.
“I bet he was famous,” Ehsan guessed. He looked at his shovel. “Maybe I could’ve gotten him to sign ol’ Dragon Hair.”
“I still cannot believe you actually have a name for your shovel,” Fatima remarked with a grin. She nudged him playfully. “You are such a dork.”
Ehsan playfully stuck his tongue out in response and the two walked in silence. He studied the houses they passed. He and Fatima had grown up with a father whose vice was drinking and a mother whose vice was whatever pills could help her cope with her alcoholic husband. The four of them had always moved from run-down apartment to run-down apartment, their father working as a power plant foreman and their mother working whatever job she could find, usually something related to childcare. Ehsan grew up viewing the suburbs as a land almost as foreign to him as his parents’ home country of Iran. He saw the suburban illusion of peace and tranquility without knowing it was an illusion, always wondering why he wasn’t allowed to experience what so many of his friends did. Part of him had always hoped to one day end up in the suburbs, comfortable and at peace, but another part of him felt he could never feel truly at home there.
Now suburbia was just like anywhere else.
“So what do we do, now that we have the whole day ahead of us?” Ehsan asked after a few more blocks.
“We get a little further from the zombies, then we forage. The food we found inside that house will not last long.”
“Good idea.” Ehsan patted the protein bar and almonds in his pocket. Barely enough for a snack between the two of them. “I hope a conspiracy nut with a bunch of stockpiled food lived around here.”
“It is suburbia, there has to be at least one of those,” Fatima replied with a smile.
Ehsan chuckled. “Makes me think of Henry. Always talking about chem-trails and stuff.”
Fatima laughed. “He did like to go on about his conspiracies. My favorite was the idea that there is a second moon NASA never told us about.”
The smile disappeared from Ehsan’s face and he shook his head. “I still can’t believe our Costco fell like that. We had everything we needed there.”
“Everything except enough security, I suppose.” Fatima sighed. “But it was nice.”
“Yeah. I miss Miguel.” Ehsan grinned. “He was the one person who could keep up with my jokes.”
Fatima smiled once more. “Not to mention the fact that he was actually funny,” she teased.
“Well, people do tend to make friends with people who are like them,” Ehsan replied with mock arrogance, pretending not to understand her comment. “In fact-”
“Hold on,” interrupted Fatima. She squinted and looked down the street. Ehsan turned around to see it: a group of zombies stumbling around the corner. They didn’t seem to see the two of them yet, but it was only a matter of seconds. He saw only seven or eight so far, but more kept coming into view. He didn’t want to stay long enough to see their total number.
“Another group?” Fatima sighed and turned around. “We should go back. We can go down one of the other streets so that we still avoid the other group, too.”
Ehsan nodded and they jogged back in the direction they’d come from. He looked over his shoulder to see that the group at the other end of the street had grown to about thirty. At least a dozen had seen them.
Ehsan and Fatima turned the corner to see another zombie a few feet in front of them. This one had been an elderly woman before turning. They disposed of it with little effort and kept moving. For the next few blocks they found no other zombies, other than one still buckled into the passenger seat of an SUV. Then, on the fourth street they wandered onto, they saw nine of them. They decided to move past them without engaging, though Ehsan did manage to attack the knees of a few.
On the next street, they saw an elementary school with gates heavily fortified by furniture. The sign in front read LINDA VISTA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. Between them and the school, however, stood almost twenty zombies. Ehsan and his sister exchanged glances. The school looked like a good place to check for supplies, but getting past such a crowd would prove tricky.
“Do we go back and face those nine, or try to run past these guys and find a way inside?” asked Ehsan. “It looks like it’s worth checking out.”
“We should-”
“Hey!” called a male voice from the elementary school. “What are you two doing?”
Ehsan and Fatima flinched. Ehsan hadn’t heard a voice other than his sister’s in weeks.
“We are only trying to find shelter!” Fatima replied, scanning the school. “We are not here to hurt anyone!”
Ehsan examined the powder blue iron gates, heavily fortified with classroom furniture from the inside, to see where the voice came from. He saw no one. He looked back in front of him to see the zombies approach them, though some walked in the direction of the stranger’s voice.
“Hold on!” shouted the same voice. More zombies turned toward it. Hearing the man’s voice again allowed Ehsan to realize its source: the roof. On it stood a man with a crowbar. Another man stood behind him, a little bigger in stature, holding a baseball bat. Both wore marine uniforms, had clean shaven faces, and looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties. Judging by their disciplined posture and mannerisms, Ehsan guessed they were actual marines- or at least had been.
Four of the zombies closed in on Fatima and Ehsan. Ehsan picked at their knees with his shovel to knock them over, taking them down one by one. Fatima acted as a distraction to make sure they didn’t all gang up on Ehsan. When all four squirmed on the ground, their knees destroyed, Ehsan and Fatima each finished off two of them.
Ehsan looked toward the school when they finished. The marine that’d been talking, who had light brown skin, a sharp jawline, and buzzed hair, had apparently found a way from the roof to the front of the school. He swung his crowbar with tremendous force and little restraint at the zombies. His friend, who had slightly more hair, pale skin, broad shoulders, and bit of a beer belly, swung his bat with more caution than his crowbar-wielding friend. The two took out almost a dozen of the zombies by themselves. The ease with which they did so impressed Ehsan, but he shifted his attention back to the zombies immediately in front of him. Three more approached. Once more, they used a strategy of attacking the legs to immobilize the zombi
es before taking them out.
When they finished, Ehsan looked over to see the marines had taken care of the rest of the zombies in front of them. The marine who’d spoken to them gave his weapon to his pale friend and strolled towards Ehsan and Fatima.
“Hey, I’m Josue,” the marine declared with a grin. He motioned toward the other marine. “That’s Ryan over there.” Ryan nodded toward them with military stoicism.
Ehsan recognized the mischievous grin of Josue and returned one in kind. “I’m Ehsan.”
“Fatima,” his sister added cautiously.
“So, looks like we’ve got ourselves a couple of muzzies here!” Josue exclaimed.
“Excuse me?” Fatima retorted. Ehsan’s grin immediately left his face.
The other marine, Ryan, sighed loudly enough for Ehsan and Fatima to hear. “Really, Josue?” The marine had a mild Southern accent.
“Hey, I’m just joking!” Josue shouted back to Ryan, his grin never leaving his face. He turned back to Ehsan and Fatima. “Don’t be so sensitive, I’m kidding.”
Ehsan glanced at Fatima, who looked livid. Ehsan didn’t feel very happy himself. No matter how many times someone he didn’t know called him that, it never stung less.
“Well, thanks, and goodbye,” Fatima said coolly. She turned around.
“C’mon, don’t be like that,” Josue responded. He looked at Ehsan, but Ehsan turned around without saying anything. Part of him was curious to see what sort of place the two had set up at the school, but he didn’t want to risk a fight breaking out. Especially not with people this strong.
Ehsan heard two clanking noises behind him. He turned back around to see that Ryan had set down both weapons. He walked toward the three of them with his hands up. “Sorry y’all, Josue is a fucking idiot sometimes.” He stopped right next to Josue. “We’re part of a community of survivors holed up at this elementary school. We’re always looking for new members if yer interested. I promise everyone is nicer than Josue.”
The Human Spring Page 1