Just Another Day
In the Zombie Apocalypse
Episode 4
L.C. Mortimer
Copyright: L.C. Mortimer
Published: 2016
Publisher: Amazon Kindle
The right of L. C. Mortimer to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.
Alice, Mark, and Kyle expected to find a lot of things in their new town:
Fear.
Hunger.
The undead.
None of them expected to find Torrance, though.
Can they trust the feisty redhead who seems to know her way around town?
Do they want to?
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse is an episodic serial and should be read in order. Each episode ends in a cliffhanger and leads directly into the next story.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Author
More
Lost in the Apocalypse
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Alice looked toward the sound of the voice.
It took her a second to register where it had come from. Then she saw the open window in the building across the road. The building, which she thought was some sort of government office, was built of stone. It was sturdy and appeared to be quite strong. It was obviously a good hiding place because she hadn’t known the woman was in there.
They’d been hiding in this town for a day. They’d spent the night directly across the street from the woman’s hideout. They’d been inside the library, but they hadn’t noticed someone was there in the other building. They hadn’t noticed someone else was in the apocalypse with them, and that was bad.
It said something about their survival instincts. It said something about the fact that Alice and her boys were supposed to be strong and smart, and while they might be strong, they hadn’t been smart. Not about this.
“Fuck,” she whispered, looking toward the building. The window closed and there were no further sounds from that direction. Alice eyed the structure wearily. She glared at it, wishing she had x-ray vision or some other type of superhuman skills. Wouldn’t that make the apocalypse a little bit easier?
Why couldn’t that have been what this virus did?
Instead of reanimating the dead, why couldn’t they have gotten x-ray vision?
She wanted some of that shit. She didn’t want zombies.
“Who the hell was that?” Kyle asked, staring at the window.
“Beats the fuck out of me,” Mark said. Then he looked at Alice and Kyle and motioned toward the library. “I think that’s enough killing for one day. Let’s go back inside.” They were all a bit uneasy with the fact they’d been caught off guard. They were all a little uncomfortable with the fact that someone had managed to get the jump on them.
They’d been killing zombies, but they’d been messing around.
They’d let their guard down.
They’d screwed up.
Alice, Mark, and Kyle retreated quickly to the library, bringing their pile of weapons and pilfered wallets with them. Alice still thought Mark was strange in his own way, but he was the only reason she was still alive, so she’d give him his quirks. She was weird, too, she knew, but in her own little ways.
Once they were inside and the door was locked, she turned to Mark.
“Should we go try to figure out who she is?” The voice had obviously been a woman’s voice. They hadn’t seen her face, but it was quite apparent that she was a female. Alice wondered if there was anyone else, but she guessed there wasn’t. She guessed it was just that one girl all alone in that building, trapped there like she was the last one on Earth.
She must be lonely.
“Not a chance in hell,” Mark said, kicking off his shoes. He wasted no time making himself comfortable in the library. They were going to be living there for a few days, at least. Alice knew she should follow suit and try to get comfortable, too, but it was difficult.
She still felt uneasy and restless. They’d burned off so much energy killing things this morning that she was tired and sleepy. Should she take a nap? In the middle of the day? Like a child? She wasn’t sure. It felt strange somehow, wrong. It felt weird to not be at work or not be busy running errands.
The idea of taking a nap seemed messed up to her. She felt like she was being lazy, but she was feeling so tired, overwhelmed. She was feeling like everything was pointless.
“What do we do now?” She asked Mark. He was heading toward the back of the library, toward the staircase that led to the second floor.
“Nothing,” he said. “We do nothing.”
“What do you mean?” She asked, scurrying up the stairs behind him.
“What are you even talking about, Alice? I’m not going to greet the neighbors, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It’s absolutely what I’m asking, Mark. What the hell? We can’t just sit here and do nothing!”
“Yeah, we can,” he pushed open the door upstairs and headed into the little room they’d slept in. He dumped all of his items on the table and began sorting weapons and random useful things he’d found. The wallets went in one pile, the keys in another. The weapons were pretty bloody, and he made another pile with those. He would probably clean them later.
“But-”
“Look, Alice,” Mark didn’t glance up at her. “I know you want to insert yourself into this girl’s life. You probably think she’s over there feeling lonely or scared or who the hell knows what, but we’re not going over.”
“But-”
“It could be a trap,” Mark continued, ignoring her protests. “It could be a set-up. She could have a group of guys over there who jump us and take all our shit. She could have a dog who attacks us while she watches for fun. She could have a pet zombie she needs food for. We don’t know. We have no idea.”
“But-”
“Alice,” Mark turned, finally, and walked over to her. He towered over her, but she wasn’t scared. Not of Mark. Never of him. He’d saved her more times in the last few days than most women had been saved in a lifetime. He’d rescued her, helped her get away from their apartment building, helped her run. He’d given her the strength she needed to keep going.
He’d been brave and he’d been wild and he’d been weird, but he was Mark.
He put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her, almost sympathetically.
“I know it’s hard,” he said, lowering his voice, and for just a second, Mark looked sad. “Leaving people behind is never easy, Alice. It’s never, ever easy. It doesn’t get easier. The world doesn’t get brighter. This is it now. This is it. This is what our future is.” He waved one arm around the room. “We have a tiny room that smells like blood and sweat. We have a little bit of food and a little bit of courage, but not a lot of hope, honey.”
She stared at him, not blinking.
Not a lot of hope.
He was right.
They didn’t.
She didn’t want to admit it, didn’t like to think about it. They should be riling each other up. They should be getting crazy, getting excited. They should be going nuts over the apocalypse. They should be coming up with crazy plans to survive and crazy ways to find food and weird ways to secure their building.
They shouldn’t be sitting around feeling hopeless.
She pushed Mark away and went to the table. She picked up the handgun. Kyle’s gun.
“What are you doing?” Mark asked.
Alice whirled around and held it to her head. Mark looked surprised, but didn’t react.
“What’s the point, Mark? If we don’t have any hope, then what’s the point of any of this? Why shouldn’t I just shoot myself in the fucking face right now? Huh? Tell me, fucker. Tell me why I shouldn’t just go a little crazy right now?”
Mark didn’t react the way she thought he would. She thought he would start telling her reasons she should stay alive. She thought he would start listing off reasons the Good Lord still had a plan for her life. She thought he would tell her the world wasn’t that bad, that maybe they could find something to live for, but he didn’t.
Instead of arguing with her, Mark just took a step forward, then another. He walked slowly, determinedly, across the room to her. When he was right in front of her, he stared down at her.
Alice didn’t look up.
She wouldn’t meet his eyes, didn’t want to.
She didn’t want to look at him in this moment. It would weaken her, she thought. She couldn’t stand the thought that Mark might look sad or scared. She couldn’t stand the thought that he might look ambivalent.
There was no one left in the world to care about what happened to Alice. There was no boyfriend. There were no friends. Her coworkers were dead or gone, probably focused on their own survival. Fuck, they were lawyers. They were probably the first ones to die.
She could picture it now: a team of men in suits staring down the undead, listing reasons why their actions violated different laws. Then the zombies would bite, and the lawyers would go down, and despite being horrible, the world would be a little bit better because those assholes were no longer in it.
Mark invaded Alice’s space.
He stared at her. She wouldn’t look, but she could feel his eyes burning into her. He was waiting for her to cave, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t give him the pleasure.
“I’ll do it,” she whispered, but her voice wavered. No one would believe her. She didn’t even fucking believe herself.
“Alice,” Mark said, and then he put his hands on her waist. She had taken off her clothes outside. They’d been bloody and gross and she’d stripped them off and left them. Now she was standing in front of Mark in her bra and panties, and she suddenly realized just how little covered her body.
She was exposed, open.
She was vulnerable.
And for the very first time with him, she felt weak.
“Alice,” he repeated.
She wouldn’t look at him. Her hand shook as she pressed the gun harder to her temple. It was loaded, she thought. Kyle wouldn’t have left it unloaded. The safety was off and that she actually did know, because she’d checked. All it would take was one little movement, one little tug on the trigger.
She could leave this world beyond.
It would be over.
Mark pressed his fingers into her waist and pulled her closer to him. Now she was flush against him, and she noticed how heavy he was breathing. She was breathing hard, too, and suddenly, she wasn’t thinking about dying.
Suddenly, she wasn’t thinking about proving something to Mark about his crappy attitude.
Suddenly, she wasn’t thinking about anything but him and her.
Suddenly, she was thinking the couches weren’t that far from where they were standing and they had all the time in the world.
“Alice,” he said once more, but this time, her name was a whisper on his lips.
It was a promise.
It was a question.
Chapter 2
She was a fucking idiot and she was going to give him a damn aneurism.
What the hell was Alice thinking? A gun? Really? Oh, he knew she could handle herself with a weapon. She’d done it plenty of times before. He didn’t have any weird, backwards ideas that women shouldn’t be trusted with weapons.
But the idea that she was playing him pissed him the fuck off.
He knew exactly where he’d gone wrong.
He replayed the conversation over and over in his head and he’d figured out exactly where he screwed up.
He shouldn’t have blown off the fact that she felt bad for the other woman. The woman across the street was someone Alice could relate to. She probably saw a bit of herself in the woman. She probably thought it was unfair to leave a little, defenseless woman alone in the zombie apocalypse.
Well, Mark didn’t think women were defenseless.
He certainly didn’t think they were fucking helpless.
That’s not how he viewed women and it certainly wasn’t how he viewed Alice.
She was different, special. She was unique. Feisty: she was feisty.
Now her body was pressed against his and every protective instinct in his body was screaming for him to take away the gun and wrap his arms around her. He wanted to protect her and care for her. He wanted to make her feel safe because he was going to protect her. He was going to guard her.
She might only ever view him as a guard dog who was at her beck and call, and that was fine. He’d live with that if it meant they could keep being friends, if it meant they could keep facing this world together. He’d live with it if it meant she was going to stay in his world.
Alice was his world.
She didn’t know it. That was obvious. He got it. The apocalypse wasn’t exactly the time to try to build a relationship, though, now was it? No, Mark hadn’t been good at relationships when the world had been fine and he certainly wasn’t good at them now.
He was a fucking horrible husband.
He knew he’d ruined his ex-wife for marriage. He didn’t want to ruin Alice, too. Oh, he knew that it took two to tango and it took two to break-up. It took two people to destroy a relationship. Janelle had made plenty of mistakes, but so had he.
He’d made too many.
Sometimes he ran through a list of mistakes in his head. Sometimes he thought about every way he’d fucked up his wife and his relationship and he wished he could change things, but that was no way to live. Regret was no way to live your life. At some point, you had to move on. At some point, you had to move forward.
You couldn’t stagnate.
You couldn’t stand still.
And in that moment, as Mark looked at Alice with her eyes clenched shut and the little gun in her hands. He looked at her and he realized he was tired of trying to be good. He was tired of trying to be honorable. He was tired of trying to do everything and to be everything.
He was tired.
When he was with Alice, when he was making her laugh or even just watching her kill the Infected, he felt calm. He felt at peace. There was a monster in his heart that she seemed to calm just by being near him.
He didn’t want to lose that.
Now she was standing before him with the gun in her hand and she was shaking. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she was trembling.
“Alice,” he whispered. Her name was a song on his mouth, a promise on his lips.
He would take care of her.
He would keep her safe.
He would get her through this.
They’d get through it together.
“I’m going to take your gun now,” he said. He warned her because her eyes were shut. He didn’t want her to freak out when he moved and accidentally kill herself. Neither one of them wanted that. Not really. She might be scared and sad and desperate, but she didn’t really want to die.
But Alice needed something to live for.
<
br /> And Mark could give her that.
He needed to stop being a pussy, to stop holding back. He needed to stop talking himself out of something that was a good thing.
He took the gun from her. She let it go easily. She didn’t cling to it or fight him for it. This surprised him a little. He flicked the safety back on and put the weapon on the table with all the rest, then he put his hands back on her waist and this time, he pulled her close. He wrapped his arms all the way around her and that was all it took for Alice to break.
She crumbled.
She sobbed against his chest and he rubbed her back and patted her hair, but then he couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t take her hurting anymore. He needed to stop her pain. He needed to make her feel better.
He lifted her up, sweeping her into his arms. She was light and easy to carry. She probably thought she was too fat, but he liked her soft curves and her pale skin. She had freckles and he thought they made her look cute. They made her look carefree and curious.
Alice kept crying as he carried her to one of the couches. He sat down and placed her on his lap, and she continued to cry.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised.
“Nothing about this is okay.”
“It’s going to be okay,” he repeated.
“No. No, it’s not.”
“Hey,” he grabbed her face, put his hands on her cheeks. He made her look up at him and her eyes blinked, widening at the intimate and familiar touch. “Look at me, Alice.”
She stared at him, waiting for him to say something.
Anything.
“Alice, everything is going to be okay,” he promised.
Then Mark leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers, and he realized he believed his own words.
Chapter 3
Alice was going to have a freak out.
Kyle was sure of that.
He’d seen the way she stormed after Mark and he decided it would be best to steer clear. It would be best to stay away from that when it happened. Alice didn’t get really, truly angry very often, but when she did, Kyle figured he was no match for her.
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 4) Page 1