Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 4)

by Mortimer, L. C.

  But they hadn’t known.

  And they hadn’t prepared.

  And somehow, they’d still been okay.

  “Okay” was all relative, Alice knew, but Mark had managed to save her ass many times and right now, she was thankful he’d gotten her out of their apartment building when he had.

  “Do you think about your parents?” Mark asked, surprising her. She didn’t talk about them a lot.

  “Not as much as I should. I think about Timothy more. Pretty fucked up, right?”

  “Not really. He died. They abandoned you. Big difference.”

  “I don’t think most people view what they did as abandoning me.”

  “I do.”

  “Yeah, me too.” It still hurt sometimes, so she tried not to think about it. She had so many other things to worry about now, so many other problems that were more real, more tangible. She had so many other things to care about that her parents running off to live in Florida seemed like a stupid thing to feel upset about.

  “I don’t think about Janelle that much, either.”

  “You’ve never talked about her.”

  “I’ve talked about her.”

  “Only in passing.” She didn’t say what she was really thinking. Only when you’re completely wasted. She probably should have, but she didn’t want to push her luck. Mark rarely opened up when he was sober. Not that she cared he drank a lot. She didn’t. It wasn’t really a big deal.

  They kept walking and he motioned for them to turn down one of the side roads, so they did. Trees lined either side of the road, giving them a little bit of shade from the afternoon sun. It was autumn, but it was hot today. After not showering, Alice felt sweaty and gross.

  “Think any of these places still has running water?” She asked hopefully.

  “You never know,” Mark said. “Sometimes with small towns, a few houses will still have wells. They’re all supposed to be on city water, but you never know.”

  “I could really go for a shower.”

  “You and me both.”

  They walked for a few more minutes. She thought about grabbing his hand, about holding it as they walked down the road, but she didn’t. They weren’t a couple. No matter what might have happened between them, nothing had changed, she reasoned.

  They were the same people.

  Their relationship was the same.

  “How many of these houses do you think are abandoned?”

  “Hard to say,” Mark commented. They were walking down the middle of the road. Every so often they saw a zombie, but they didn’t bother killing them unless the assholes came close. Mark killed two before they reached the end of the road and Alice got one. There were about half a dozen they just left alone.

  “What about this one?” Alice pointed to one of the houses at the end of the road. The street came to a very sudden stop and simply turned into forest, but there were two houses there: one on either side of the road. The one Alice was pointing to was a little brick house that was a single story. There were two windows on the front of the house that seemed to be in good shape and the door looked solid.

  “What about it?”

  “Think it’s empty?”

  “Want to find out?”

  “Yeah,” Alice said. “Why not? Maybe there will be something useful inside.”

  “Forget finding something useful,” Mark said. “Maybe we can fucking move in. I’m already tired of the library.”

  Chapter 6

  The house itself looked sturdy. The windows weren’t damaged or broken. The door appeared to be intact. There was no car in the driveway. Mark felt completely ambivalent about going through the house, but it seemed important to Alice.

  Apparently, he’d do anything for her.

  He’d do anything to make her smile.

  When had that happened?

  Seeing her hit rock bottom had hurt him, choked him. It had broken his heart to see her feeling so empty and damaged. It broke his heart to know he’d been part of the reason she was so damaged.

  He should have been more encouraging, but he hadn’t been. Instead, he’d been brutally, over-the-top honest, and he’d hurt her.

  “Let’s check the garage first.” Mark looked around, but the few wandering zombies on the road seemed to be busy with their lives. What were they even doing? He wondered what zombies filled their time with. From where Mark was standing, their lives looked boring as hell. One of the Infected was kicking a mailbox and one was trying to pluck grass from a yard. It was stupid and they were stupid.

  “No car,” Alice said, jumping up to peek in the garage windows. Mark reached for the handle and pulled the door up. A lot of people left their garage doors unlocked and this one was no exception. The door slid up easily, revealing a dusty garage full of tools.

  “Looks like someone had a fun hobby,” Mark commented, heading for the worktable. Whoever owned the house had invested heavily in saws, hammers, screwdrivers, and wrenches. “I feel like I’m at a freaking Garage Depot.”

  “That’s not the name of the store,” Alice said.

  “Close enough. I’m taking this,” Mark picked up one of the hammers.

  “Maybe they have guns inside. I want a .380.”

  “We’ll see what we can find.”

  The door that led from the garage to the house was locked. Mark tried it a few times and Alice tried her “looking-under-the-mat” trick, but they couldn’t find a spare key. He could pick the lock if he had the right tools, but he didn’t much feel like taking the time, so he simply kicked the door in.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Alice said. “What if we want to live here?”

  She hadn’t even finished speaking when the first Z threw its body at Mark, knocking him off his feet. He landed on his ass on the concrete floor and the smelly corpse landed on top of him, knocking his baseball bat out of his hands. Damn, it was a stinky one.

  He grabbed its arms and tried to hold the fucker at bay. It was hissing and launching its head at him, though, trying to bite Mark.

  Mark pressed his mouth shut. He didn’t want the thing to drool or spit on him. He could probably get infected that way, he thought, and he didn’t really want to die today. Not after the afternoon he’d had with Alice. No thanks. He wanted to have more afternoons with her, more days. He wanted more nights with her.

  He wanted a lifetime with her, if he was honest.

  But the apocalypse wasn’t a place for honesty.

  “Hang tight,” Alice called out. Then, just as quickly as the attack had started, it was over. Mark felt the body fall from on top of him and land beside him. He peeked over at the blood gushing from its head. Then he turned to Alice.

  She was her crowbar and grinning like she’d just won some sort of golf championship.

  “Pretty good, right?” She said. “You saw that, right?”

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Mark said.

  “It didn’t bite you, did it?”

  “Nah.”

  “Did it spit on you?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because-” She didn’t finish her sentence because two more Infected came barreling out of the house and into the garage. What the hell? Had someone been having a party in there when shit hit the fan?

  How had they not noticed there were Infected inside?

  They’d gotten lazy and complacent. It had only been a few days, but they’d already started viewing the Infected as “not that bad.” They’d already started viewing them as slow motherfuckers they didn’t have to be careful about.

  They were paying the damn price for that now.

  Alice landed on her elbows and screamed when she hit the ground. Somehow, Mark thought that only egged the Infected on.

  Chapter 7

  “So you guys have nowhere to go,” Torrance said thoughtfully. Kyle nodded. He had spent the last hour spilling his guts to Torrance and even though it was a stupid idea, it felt good.

  It felt right.

  She was interesting. With
her bright red hair and her big green eyes, she looked spunky. Bright. She looked like a light in the fucking darkness, a bright hope in the middle of the apocalypse.

  “That’s about right,” Kyle agreed. “Any recommendations?” They couldn’t stay in the library. Not for good. Not long-term. It was a fun place to spend the night, but there was no easy way in and out of the building and they didn’t have access to water.

  “You can’t stay here,” Torrance said quickly.

  “I wasn’t trying to invite myself.”

  “There are a lot of houses.”

  “And how many of those houses have residents?” Kyle asked.

  Torrance just shrugged her shoulders and looked around nervously. She looked around a lot, Kyle noticed. It was like she was worried someone was going to sneak up on her.

  Or something.

  She held herself with a certain grace, but she was tense, too. He thought she was probably good at fighting, good at taking care of herself when she had to fight off a zombie, but she seemed tired, too.

  Kyle’s initial suspicion that Torrance had been lonely was right on. She seemed cautious and worried. Had she been locked in here the entire week? Had she been hiding away, waiting for the world to get back to normal?

  It wasn’t going to be normal ever again.

  As much as he wanted to believe it could be, Kyle was beginning to think they were all fucked. This was the new normal. This was it. They were wanderers, now. They were losers. Lost people. They were doomed to wander the Earth with the dead and hope they’d make it out alive, but none of them were going to make it out alive.

  They were all going to die here.

  Suddenly, the world felt like it was shrinking in on him and Kyle couldn’t breathe.

  “Um, hey, buddy. Um, Kyle? You okay?” Torrance was suddenly right by his side. She got to her knees in front of him and looked up at his face. “You aren’t looking so good all of a sudden. What’s wrong?”

  “My inhaler,” he managed to croak out, grasping at his chest.

  “Where is it?”

  “My backpack. Library. Upstairs.”

  “Got it.”

  Torrance took off running. Kyle didn’t have to say anything else. He didn’t even move. He just sat there and wished he was healthy, wished he wasn’t the sick kid in the world of zombies. His chest tightened and he tried to breathe.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  When he was a kid, his asthma was even worse. It was even more terrible than it was now. Now, he knew almost all of his triggers. He couldn’t spend too much time around dogs or too much time in grass or too much time around flowers. He needed to keep his stress under control and he couldn’t run very much or he’d have an attack.

  When he was little, though, it was everything.

  He’d practically been attached to his nebulizer from the time he was five. His siblings never understood why he got special treatment from his parents when he was sick. They thought it must be fun to stay up late, to get to watch television after bedtime. They didn’t understand the way the sticky steam made his face itch or how hard it was to hold perfectly still while the machine dispensed its medicine.

  They didn’t understand how scary it was to be breathing one minute, but not able to the next.

  They didn’t understand how horrible it was to be stuck to a machine and not able to walk around when he wanted to.

  They didn’t understand how terrifying it was to be constantly worried an attack would strike.

  They didn’t get it.

  Now, as an adult, he had learned to deal with his physical limitations, at least most of the time.

  Oh, he hoped Torrance could find his inhaler. He breathed in and out, but this was a bad one. Had he really been that tense? That stressed? Or had he overexerted himself with the killing spree that morning? Maybe he should have taken things slower.

  Maybe he should have given his body more time to adjust to the physical strain of murder. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? Murder? Kyle knew no one really thought that, and he tried to feel the same way, but right now, with his lungs tight and his throat tense, he was thinking about all the bad and stupid shit he’d done in his life.

  He thought of the time he’d lied to his mother about a mirror he’d broken because he’d been running in the house and crashed into it. She already knew he was the one who’d done it, but she let him keep lying. She let him talk until he’d dug a nice hole for himself.

  He thought of the time he’d stolen a kiss from Amanda Valentine when he thought her boyfriend wasn’t looking. He’d been looking. Kyle had two black eyes for the rest of the week because of that kiss.

  He thought of the time he’d tried to order his own food at a Mexican restaurant using the Spanish he’d learned in class, but halfway through, he’d forgotten how to speak. He’d gotten embarrassed, so instead of just switching to English, he’d stopped talking while everyone stared at him.

  He thought of all of these moments, and he thought of how they’d formed who he was as a person now.

  Kyle was not the most perfect man in the world.

  He was not the bravest or the kindest or the most thoughtful, but he was a man who would do anything for the people he loved.

  He would do anything for his friends.

  He was supposed to sit up during an asthma attack, but the pain was too great, so he lay down on the bench and closed his eyes.

  “Breathe,” he whispered to himself. Breathe.

  He wondered if Torrance was actually going to get the inhaler. Would she be able to find it? It was in his backpack and he’d been stupid to go out without it. Why hadn’t he just gone upstairs and gotten some clothes? Why hadn’t he thought he might want his damn inhaler?

  Oh yeah.

  Alice and Mark.

  The two of them had been at each other’s throats lately and Kyle thought that before the week was up they would either kill or fuck each other.

  He wasn’t sure which.

  He wasn’t sure which would be better.

  Did he want two roommates who hated each other or who loved each other?

  In and out.

  He kept breathing.

  “Breathe,” he heard Torrance’s voice. He felt the plastic press against his lips and he opened his mouth. “One, two, three,” she whispered, and then she pressed the top of the inhaler. The medication went into his mouth and Kyle sucked in.

  “One, two, three,” she began to count again, and she counted to ten for him. He released his breath and she gave him a second dose right away. He didn’t even fight her, didn’t even argue. He shouldn’t be wasting his medication, but what good would it be if he was dead? If he died?

  “Thank you,” Kyle said.

  “Don’t talk.”

  “Don’t be mean,” he responded.

  “Save your strength, slick. You’re going to need it.”

  Chapter 8

  So he had asthma.

  The scrawny guy had asthma.

  Torrance had listened to him talk about his friends and their journey to raven. She’d listened to everything he’d told her about the places they’d stayed, the zombies they’d fought, and the obstacles they’d overcome.

  It almost sounded fake.

  Kyle’s storytelling abilities were smooth, though, and any hesitation in his ability to speak seemed to be only long enough for him to recall different details he thought were important: the color of a car, perhaps, or maybe the type of vehicle. He didn’t seem to lie, at least not at first glance, and Torrance considered herself a very good judge of character.

  It was difficult not to like Kyle.

  When he’d started to struggle to breathe, she knew right away what the problem was and she felt stupid for not having an inhaler with her. She’d spent so many nights administering breathing treatments and giving out medicine. Shouldn’t she have kept a couple rescue inhalers on her even in the apocalypse?

  It was a s
tupid thing to think, she knew. It wasn’t her fault this guy was struggling and it wasn’t her job to take care of him. She wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t anyone’s mother. Not anymore. That’s how it would stay, too.

  Still, Torrance felt a certain bond with Kyle. She felt a certain understanding. He was hurting and he was different than his friends.

  That couldn’t be easy.

  She didn’t get the vibe he was jealous of Mark or of Alice. If anything, Kyle seemed to admire them. He seemed to think they were good, honest people, and that made Torrance think they must be, as well.

  They must be good people.

  They must be kind.

  The truth is that when the end of the world came, Torrance thought it was going to be like a movie. She thought people would be bad and evil. She thought cannibals would make themselves known and there would be groups of men out to rape everyone, out to kill everyone.

  That hadn’t happened.

  In the days since the infection began, she’d seen people drive through Raven. She’d watched from her window as cars drove through the little Podunk town, not even noticing her hiding spot.

  Kyle and his friends had been the first ones to stop, the first ones to explore, and the first ones to stay.

  Torrance thought there would have been more.

  She thought people would look for hiding places, for homes. She thought people would look for a place to make their own, that they would want some sort of stability, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

  If anything, the apocalypse made people a little more antisocial than they were before. People were scared to come out because there were dead people walking around. If they bit you, you’d die. Torrance assumed any type of bodily fluid could transmit the virus. Saliva could be dangerous. Even excrement could be deadly, if that were the case.

  She didn’t know if zombies pooped.

  She wasn’t about to try to find out.

  Still, she shouldn’t have been so surprised when Kyle and his friends turned out to be normal, decent people. They didn’t seem to be fucked up or assholes or jerks. They were just normal. They were just themselves.