She makes her way out first, immediately readying her bow and nocking an arrow, searching for any signs of trouble. I step out into the sunlight and find that we’re in a narrow alleyway, facing a brick wall of another building behind us. If they come around the building, then we’re trapped like rats. I look at Lindsay and she nods to the south. She’s wise. We need to get out of here as quickly as possible. I follow her, drawing my machete, though I don’t know how much help I’m going to be if we get in a hairy situation. Hell, we’re already in a hairy situation.
Before we make it to the end of the alley, one of the fanatics is walking the street with his spear down, searching for any sign of us. He hasn’t seen us, in fact, he’s looking on the wrong side of the street. Lindsay immediately freezes and draws back her bow. I want to call out to her, to get her to stop, but I’m too late. The man with the spear is starting to turn. We could dive behind a dumpster and hide until he moves on in search of us elsewhere, but Lindsay isn’t waiting. Her survival instinct has kicked in and I’m too slow. The bowstring hums and the arrow flies across the street and pins the man through the neck. He drops almost immediately, his spear clattering on the ground and he gropes the wound in his neck, hissing as he gags, trying to call out for help, but his throat is completely ruined. Lindsay doesn’t hesitate, she draws and nocks another arrow, stepping out into the street and looking for a new target. She finds him and fires before I have a chance to see who it is.
Her arrow takes the second man in the chest, piercing through his ribs and into his lung, collapsing it as he falls backwards, screaming in surprise and agony. I reach Lindsay, who is drawing a third arrow ready to fire it, when I shove her onward toward the alleyway. It would be smart to split up, to draw them away from her, but I can’t do that. I’m too slow and she’s too stubborn. She would hunt them the entire way. Part of me thinks that we might be able to make a stand. Her sharpshooter eye might be enough to put the rest of them down before others descend upon us. She glares at me begrudgingly as she makes for the far side of the street. Reaching down, she rips her arrow from the dying fanatic’s throat before we vanish into the shade and shadows of the alleyway. The screaming man in the street has drawn the attention of the others and soon three long blasts of the horn fills the air. We should have killed him. We should have ended him before he could point out which way we went.
I grab Lindsay’s arm and pull her west at the next intersection and head diagonally toward the southernmost alley, trying to put distance between us. We have to get out of here before they find us. The horn is drawing others in and I don’t know where they’ll be coming from. All I know is that we are running out of time with every passing second. We make our way southwest, weaving into alleyways and trying to avoid time out in the open.
Someone spots us and there are three more long blasts of the horn. They’re hunting us like rabbits. I look back and see one of the hairless, bare-chested fanatics two blocks behind us. Soon there are others that join him, running into the alleyway, screaming for our blood.
“We need to find somewhere to hide—fast,” I say between my staggered breathing. I’m too out of shape, too weak for this. Lindsay looks back at me and sees that I’m holding my side as I run after her.
Coming out on an open street, we see that there is another band to the east with three dogs on chains. I stop for a moment, crouching behind a bus stop, and stare at the dogs that are maybe three blocks away. I can hear them barking and the distant voices of their owners that I can’t make out. I smile to myself. I haven’t seen a dog since Detroit. God, that feels like ages ago. Lindsay crosses the street and makes it safely to the other side, vanishing around the corner of a post office. I cast one more glance down the street at the band of fanatics and their dogs before chasing after her. Rushing around the corner, I watch as she crosses yet another street.
She’s leaving me behind. I start to panic. I’m not going to make it on my own without her, without her bow and her skills. I need her with me. Pushing forward, I keep my hand on my side, trying to keep the growing pain inside of me, as if it might burst out my side and start spilling a trail for them to follow. My ribs have been doing well, but now I can feel the ache in them again. I’m not going to make it. I cross the street after stopping and checking to make sure that there’s no one waiting for me, no spotters or trackers. I make sure to avoid any puddles that might lead them in the direction of me.
Halfway across the street, I realize that I have no idea where Lindsay has disappeared to. I keep running, hoping that I might join up with her, but the reality of the situation seems grim. Most likely, she’s made her own escape. If she’s smart, she will have cut her losses with me and abandoned me to the zealots. Quickly, I make my way between two houses and hear something moving inside. There’s a pounding against the window panes and I turn to look, terrified of what sort of fanatic I might find waiting to skewer me for blasphemy.
What I find is worse. There are dozens of Zombies inside the houses. They’re barricaded inside, banging against the thick window panes, trying to get at me. I flinch as I stare at them. Their faces aren’t caked with the old, hideous gore that all the others have had. They look decent, as if they’ve been taken care of, cleaned even. I step back from the window, turning to run for it, but I begin to realize that they’re in all of the houses. There’s a horrifying realization creeping into my mind. They’re pinning them up, corralling them for when they might need them. What better way to keep people from looting the houses, hiding in them. Mark the houses by locking in Zombies. It’s a twisted form of marking which houses have been cleared, and which ones haven’t. It keeps unwanted guests from squatting inside their domain as well.
Turning from the scene, I run through a back yard and hop the chain link fence, landing in the dusty, rocky lawn of another house. These houses are large, two story homes that were put up probably during the eighties for upper middle class families. They’re nice, but the year of neglect has taken its toll on them. Many of the houses are boarded up with wooden planks, fortified to keep those unwanted souls out. I don’t stop to see if there are any eyes peeking between the boards. I need out of this city. I’m alone again. I don’t have the luxury of slowing down.
I make it through the subdivision of two story houses and find myself in a rundown part of the city. The whole place feels like a forgotten ghetto. There are bars on the windows and heavy metal gates over the doors. Before too long, I have to stop, gripping my ribs and wheezing. God, I’m getting old. I feel like years have passed since I last felt good. Looking around, I sense movement and drop down behind a burnt low rider. I hear the metal door open and a voice hissing at me. I grip my machete and don’t trust it. Whoever is out here, they’re definitely not my friend.
“Charlie!” the voice persists.
Slowly, I peek my head around the car, half certain that I’m paranoid and going insane now. Looking two houses down the street, I see that the metal gate is open and Lindsay is standing in the doorway. She beckons me closer with a wave and I search up and down the streets for any sign of the fanatics. Confident that I’m safe, I sneak out from behind the car and make my way across the street. Hopping the home’s pathetic fence, I run up the broken concrete walkway, climbing the concrete steps and brushing by Lindsay, before stepping into the small house and trying to catch my breath. There’s something musty and gross inside this house and it’s filled the air with its smell.
“I thought you left me,” I wheeze before collapsing into a plastic, dusty chair.
“How could I leave my Charlie?” Lindsay says without any sound of affection or admiration in her voice. I’m certain that she has lost every last positive emotion for me. She’s sweaty and tired-looking, ready to collapse at any minute. I rummage through my pack and hand her one of my bottles of water. She doesn’t have any. I know this because I packed the bags. She has all the extra gear to help make our journey easier. She looks at me and takes the bottle with a grateful nod and greedily d
rinks. She sighs and lowers the bottle. “There’s no food in the house,” she says.
“Of course not,” I smile and lean back in the chair. My stomach starts cramping as if on cue.
“We’re fucked, Charlie,” she says.
“No we’re not.” I try to retain a measure of optimism.
“We are.” She looks at me with a grim expression that frightens me. “I saw over a hundred of them patrolling the streets on my way here. Do you realize how many there have to be if they can cover that much ground? If they have one or two horns a group, then there have to be hundreds of packs of them out there. And if they’re organized, then that means they’re set up somewhere with their army well outfitted and fed. Fuck, they probably control the entire god damn city.”
She’s right. I don’t even want to begin to think about how seriously screwed we are. There were so many of those psychopaths out there that it will be impossible to navigate all of them without better information. I don’t even have a proper map of the city. How are we supposed to get out of here if there is an army watching for us around every corner? I look at Lindsay and I know that she’s thinking the same thing. If we could find some food and hole up for a while, we might be able to outlast the hunt, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Right now, we have to keep moving. That’s our only option.
“We’ve been in worse situations,” I tell her.
She looks at me with an unamused expression written across her face. “I left you behind.” She tells me what I already knew. I want to tell her that I don’t care. I know what’s at stake. Life is indispensable now and when something is indispensable and rare, it’s infinitely more precious. I look at her and nod. “Why haven’t you gotten angry about that yet?”
“No point,” I shrug.
“Is that so?” She shakes her head. “Sometimes I think you are the most emotionally reclusive man that I have ever met.”
I’m silent for a moment and stare at the empty, bleak house that we’re stuck in. It stinks. The smell is definitely from something that has died and is rotting away. We can’t stay here. It smells like a dead cat in the wall or something. “I’m glad you opened the door,” I say to her. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Lindsay answers coldly. “But I have a soft spot for you, Charlie. Something about saving your ass makes me feel good.”
I smile. “Feels good having it saved.”
Feeling that this is the end of our little conversation, I rise and quietly move throughout the house with determined, cautious steps. Those hunters could be anywhere and the zealots all seem to be eager to kill those who disagree with them. There are stains on the white walls where pictures were once hanging, but all of that is gone now. There’s a musty, brown couch in the living room with a small table at the far end. The carpet is stained from ceiling drips. There’s two bedrooms, one of them has two bunk beds shoved into the room with a dresser and a desk. The mattresses are the only things in the room that aren’t furniture. It’s in the second bedroom that I find the source of the smell. There’s a corpse in the bed with a small blanket over her. She’s been dead for a very long time, probably six months. It’s hard to even distinguish what she looked like anymore. I look at her and wonder if she had been injured or sick, taking refuge in the house. Was there anyone with her when she finally died? Or did she die alone like so many of us are destined to?
I close the door softly as I make my way back to the living room and drop down on the dusty couch and look at the window on the far side of the room. It’s boarded up like someone was trying to fortify this place before everything went to hell. I don’t know how successful they were, but it let enough light through that I could see some of the outside world through the larger cracks. It’s hard not to remember the world as it was. If I close my eyes and listen, I think that I might open them and see everything like it once was. I might see life out there again—real life. But when I open my eyes, I know I’ll see the desolation and vacancy of the earth. There’s nothing out there worth seeing anymore. Everything is dead. Those of us walking are just too stupid or too defiant to realize it yet.
Lindsay comes into the room and slowly drops her pack and quiver against the wall, looking at me with an expression that is hard for me to read. Resting her bow against the wall, she crosses the room and drops down on the couch next to me. She stares at me for a moment and then without a word, she leans over onto me, cuddling with me on the couch and closing her eyes. I don’t know what to make of her anymore. I’m just grateful that she’s not pissed at me or ignoring me. At least right now, while she’s lying against me, I know that she’s here and that I’m not alone. In the end, I feel that both of us only wanted to have a companion to walk the wasteland with. We just made the fragile world too complicated. That was our mistake.
Chapter Seventeen
I wake up and the world is bright, making me wonder just how long I was actually asleep. Was it just an hour or two, or am I missing days? Blinking, I look around and realize that Lindsay is nowhere to be seen. I lean forward on the couch and look around for her. Rubbing my face, I blink and look out the window. I feel like I’ve been beat to shit. The nap on the couch was not rewarding at all. In fact, I feel more tired than I did when I sat down on it. My legs ache and my joints are hurting. I’m not sure if that’s from the malnutrition or if it’s from the exertion and terror from being chased in a manhunt. Pulling myself up and standing, I stretch and yawn, wondering where she’s gone off to. I look at the spot by the wall where her pack was. It’s gone.
There’s an argument to be made for the possibility that she’s abandoned me again and that I’m on my own. Maybe Lindsay is finally taking this chance to leave me behind. It was a tender final moment that we shared and I’m grateful that she didn’t stick a knife or arrow in me before leaving. I don’t know where she stands with me anymore, but I think that we’ve just had our final parting in the most benevolent way possible.
I walk through the house one last time, searching for her, hoping that she might be hiding in one of the rooms, taking a moment by herself. I don’t find her. In the kitchen, I see my pack and it’s abundantly clear that I’m on my own now. I stop and look at the door. The bottom lock is locked, but the deadbolt is unlocked. She left. I sigh and pick up my pack, slinging it over my shoulder and feeling the cramps in my stomach becoming restless. I need to find something to eat, soon. There has to be something in this city. Even if those religious nut jobs did loot damn near everything, they had to have overlooked something. If they murdered or ran off everyone else who lived in this city, that means they were busy at one point. If they were busy killing and hunting down others, then perhaps they were too busy doing that to be looting everywhere.
God, I wish I knew where their headquarters were. Wherever they are setting down roots is going to be the epicenter of this madness and that will be the area to avoid. It also gives me a range to avoid looking for food. I’ve never been in Atlanta before, so I don’t have a clue how big or in which way the heart of the city lies, but I need to go south. If I start walking, I need to know that I’m not walking straight into their main encampment.
This is a shit situation and I’m becoming tired of being in shit situations. The whole damn world is getting more and more insane with each passing day. It’s time to start adapting again—especially if I’m on my own. Something the lack of Lindsay has made certain of. I look at the door and frown. It’s time to get moving. There are a lot of houses on this street and they’re as good as a place as any to start looking for something to eat.
The rundown neighborhood offers little. There’s no way into the houses that are sealed up securely. Even with the bars, the neighborhood boarded up for extra security in these harsh and unforgiving times. It’s evident that these citizens of Atlanta were not given the luxury in life of having others or relatives with whom they might retreat and find refuge from the growing storm that loomed on the horizon for them. No, they had
built their bunkers, turned on their neighbors and before anything too violent could transpire, these holy madmen showed up and must have cleared them out. I’m beginning to think that everything that has happened in this forlorn place is directly tied to the army of holy killers. It has to be.
I check the neighbors on both sides, but the doors are locked and with the bars and wood on the windows, there’s no way I’m getting into the houses quietly. Crossing the street, I find more of the same situations. I want to find someone, or something. Maybe if I could get ahold of a radio, I might be able to pick up a frequency or someone out there who is still peddling news and verbal diarrhea. They might be able to give me some sort of insight as to what’s happening in this city. I try another house and find it much the same.
Looking up at the sun, I point myself south and start walking west until I find an intersection. I stop at a four way and drop to one knee, slipping my pack off as I hide behind an old car from the sixties that looks just about the same as it probably did before the world went to shit. Thankfully, Lindsay didn’t go through my pack before she left. I wrap my fingers around the binoculars and lift them up, scouting to the west. There’s plenty more houses heading that way and soon they start to grow into two story businesses. To the north, I scout for any sign of hunting parties. When the coast is clear, I turn my gaze south and see no signs of life.
I should be hunting for Lindsay, trying to find her and make sure that she’s safe, but there’s no point to that anymore. She’s made her decision—one I was going to make for her myself yesterday. My road is south, it always has been. I stuff the binoculars back into my pack before continuing down the road. There’s nothing on the wind. There’s no noise here in Atlanta and that makes me a little bit more than uncomfortable.
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 32