Thankfully, Lexi turns around and slips the rifle from her shoulder and tosses it onto the couch. “It’s not even loaded, Val,” she sneers at me angrily. I look at her, baffled and appalled. How could she think that it matters whether the gun is loaded or not? The fact that she thinks that she can just go grab a gun and carry it around like that points directly to how naïve and childish she’s being. “What’s your problem?”
“What’s yours?” I snap at her. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m doing what Dad would have wanted us to do,” she tells me, like I’m being negligent and ignorant of some glaringly obvious fact. I look at her without a drop of comprehension. What exactly does she think our father wanted us to do? What point of clarity does she think she has? She turns back to the bag he’d brought all the way here and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. I recognize it as a map before she even hands it to me. My father had given us maps like this a dozen times and asked us to navigate for him on road trips. Back then, it had been such an honor to be in charge of navigating the way to our destination. She hands the map to me and I look at it. It’s a map of the United States. “He’s got another map in there,” she tells me. “They’re all marked.”
“So he kept track of the way he came,” I shrug. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters,” Lexi fires back at me.
“Lexi, the world is dead,” I remind her. “There’s no reason for us to go home. There’s nothing out there but death and decay. Don’t you remember Tony and the others going out there and never returning? Don’t you get it yet? There’s nothing out there for us. Those who are left out there aren’t normal, they’re not like you and me. They’re killers out there.”
“You don’t know that,” Lexi spits at me.
“I do, Lexi,” I say coldly. I can feel all eyes on me right now. It’s a bold claim and they’re going to want evidence to back it up. I know that none of them want to hear this, nor are they ready to hear this, but the truth needs to come out. I take a deep breath and step back from the situation. Maybe it’s time for all of them to know what I know. Maybe it’s time for us all to be on the same field. “When Tony and the others left, I went downstairs to the basement. I hid one of those crank radios down there just in case we needed to get information about what’s going on. I only listened to it the once, but what I heard was enough. They say that there are people out there who have gone back to their most primal needs. They say that people have turned into cannibals, mindless killers looking to eat anyone who they can sink their teeth into. They were calling them Zombies. If that’s what’s out there, then it’s too dangerous for us to go there.”
“Bullshit, Val,” Lexi cries in disbelief. “Are you kidding me right now?” Lexi turns on me with her full fury. “Those people on the radio were as crazy as loons before we put a bullet in the radio. All they cared about was fear-mongering and keeping people from going outside. Who knows what’s out there? What if Tony and everyone else found sanctuary and safety? What if they found it and don’t care about us because we were all too afraid to do what was necessary?”
“Did you look at him?” I shout over her, cutting off her self-righteous diatribe. “Did you look at the wounds he had when he showed up on our doorstep? He’d lost one of his hands, Lexi! He’d suffered multiple fractures and breaks, he’d been shot, and did you see how malnourished he was? Lexi, these are not the normal accidents from the world outside. He had to have suffered so much to get here. There’s nothing out there for us but death and pain.”
“She’s right, Lexi,” Noah says, joining into the fray. I shake my head at his attempt to step into the argument. Noah is sarcastic and nerdy, he should stick to his strengths. Rational debates are not where he excels. “It’s not safe out there.”
While Lexi turns on her boyfriend, I’m given a moment of unusual peace to look at the map in my hands. I slowly unfold it as Lexi begins calling Noah every name that she can think of. She’s throwing everything she has at him. I don’t pay attention to them. Everything sounds like I’m underwater now as I look at the map. I look at the lines my father drew, the small notations he made here and there. He’s been working on some secret key that I don’t know, but I can guess some of them.
I notice the X’s that he’s drawn over some of the waterways. It doesn’t take a cryptographer to realize that those mean that the bridges are gone or washed away. Without plant life to anchor the soil, I’m sure that the world is changing after every wind storm and rain cloud. The world is being molded into a very different place. Not only is it different physically and topographically, but who knows what kind of political structure there is out there? If there are others who are holding out and defending their lands.
I look at the map, stretching it out and folding it as I go. When I see a place marked Dayton in Ohio, I suddenly remember my father’s panicked, imploring words. He had talked about this Jason with such fire and such intensity that I suddenly understand my sister. I suddenly get where she’s coming from. Granted, as usual, whenever Lexi is right about something, she usually takes the worst possible route in showing the rest of the world that she’s right. She’s the younger sister who always likes to take the victim stance when dealing with situations. She’s always wounded or insulted by everything. It makes for annoying and fairly violent arguments.
But she is right. I have to give it to her. I don’t know where I parted ways with her, but my sister is absolutely right. My father didn’t come here to spend the rest of his days with us. He might have originally left his home to set out on an adventure to find out whether we were still alive and if we were, to die with us, but something changed. Along the way here, something happened around or in Dayton, Ohio. Whoever Jason is, he drew our father’s attention and that’s enough to make me more than curious. Jason made an impact on my father. He saw whatever Jason was doing and decided that he needed to tell us to go see it ourselves. Why else would he leave Jason’s name as one of his parting words and then have a map leading back to him? Lexi’s right. Our father didn’t come to the threshold of our home to spend the rest of our lives together. He came to get us and take us back. He had the truck and the equipment needed to do exactly that.
I look up and see that Lexi is still laying into Noah. At some point, Greg stepped in and is now sharing the wrath of my sister and her insatiable anger. I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately, but she refuses to let things go. She wants to rip all of our heads off. I think it’s finally getting to her. It’s been a year of looking at the same faces, the same walls, and the same day to day routines that are driving us all mad. Clearly she’s cracked, though.
At some point she’s decided that it’s my turn to again share in the venom she’s unleashed upon everyone in the house. I look up from the map, folding it back to the correct way. The corners are faded and curled from the use and the journey. I hold it respectfully, as if it were a Gutenberg Bible. I look at Lexi, her teary eyes and her flushed cheeks. I feel for her.
“How can you stand here in the same room with him?” sdhe accosts me. I’m ready for her, patient again. I’ve got the composure that she’s never had. “Every time I look at him, I want to rip his face off and make him eat it. At the very least, we should have tied him up and put a bullet through his stomach, just like he did to Dad.”
I realize that she’s talking about Henry and I share her ideas about that man. I’m torn when I look at him. The higher level of my cognizant soul wants to spare him, acknowledging what he did to my father as an accident, but the base darkness in my heart wants him dead. The best thing that he can do right now is to vanish and he refuses to do that. I don’t know why that’s so hard for him to realize. He keeps trying to plead his case, but he doesn’t realize that it’s futile. It’s vanity to try and make me or my sister see his line of thinking. Just shut up and leave us alone.
“If I stay here,” Lexi says with tenacious fire in her voice, “then Dad will have died for nothi
ng. He will have been murdered without a single drop of value to his sacrifice and his struggle. I will basically be spitting in his face if I don’t at least try to go look for Dayton and Jason. You all were there. You all heard him say it. We have the maps and we have the supplies. I’m going to go see what he was talking about. I’m going to see what I can do or learn or whatever. I have to.”
I look at her, seeing that there is no swaying her opinion in this matter, and I don’t think that I should try. She’s right. She’s been right this entire time and rational Valerie has been the villain. I can’t believe that I’m about to say this, but I take a deep breath and know what the responsible thing to do is. It burns in the back of my throat, but I have to say it.
“Then I’m coming with you,” I tell her. She stares at me silently, her mouth quivering as if words are still coming out but someone has hit the mute button. She knows that I’m not kidding. I haven’t been kidding people for years now. When I say something, I mean it, and people know that about me. There’s no swaying me, there’s no doubt, and there’s no joking. “I saw our father’s body, Lexi. I saw what that journey did to him and if he was alone the entire time, then maybe if he had someone else he might have fared better. So I’m going with you. He came to see both of us and he told both of us to find Jason. So I’m going with you.”
“Like hell you are,” Greg chimes in again. “Do either of you remember what happened to Tony out there? Do any of you remember what you just told us minutes ago? About the Zombie people and the wars and the wastelands? What makes you think that we’re going to let either of you go searching for some Holy Grail that your dying father—no offense—tells you about in his last moments?”
“Step off, Greg,” Lexi growls at him like a feral dog.
“No, fuck you,” Greg snaps at her. “I’m sorry about your dad, I really am, but what you’re talking about is complete and utter madness. You have to see that you’re going to get yourselves killed and we’re not going to allow that. What if this Jason turns out to be a nobody? Or maybe he is a somebody and he does know how to save the world, but what if he’s dead? Who knows how much time has passed since your father saw him? He might be six feet under by now. So what happens then? You make it all the way to wherever Jason is and you’ve got nothing, you’re left holding the bag. I’m not going to let my girlfriend and her sister risk their lives like that.”
“It isn’t your call to make,” I say to him sharply. Greg looks at me like I’ve just stuck a knife in his stomach when he approached me to hug him. I look up from the map at Greg, staring him in the eyes. I love Greg. I’ve loved Greg since before all of this happened. I’m not like Marko and Katrina or Lexi and Noah. I’ve loved Greg all the way back when the world still made sense, but he’s in the wrong here. I’m not his property. I’m not his safety blanket that he can hug when the lightning starts flashing and the thunder booms overhead. I’m a woman and I’m a daughter. My father just died and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him tell me how I’m going to honor him. “I love you, Greg,” I tell him with as much strength as I can muster. “But I don’t need your permission with this. Lexi doesn’t need anyone’s approval on this either. I was wrong in trying to stop her. So now that this is all out in the open, I’m going with her. I know that it doesn’t make sense to the rest of you, but this is our father’s last wish. He wouldn’t have told us about Jason if it didn’t matter. He wasn’t like that. So if we decide to go, then get out of the way.”
Chapter Six
I don’t know what happened to Lexi after I came upstairs. I think she stayed in the room with everyone, poring over Dad’s maps. Greg was unwilling to relent on the idea that it was too dangerous for us to go out there. He asserted that it wasn’t that we needed his permission, but that it was just too dangerous. He claimed that because we were all friends, he had a right to say whether it was a good idea or not to go wandering off into the wilderness. To him, this was just Lexi and me wanting to go camping or something. I don’t know what he was talking about. This was not a prison for anyone. This was not someplace where we needed special permission in order to go out into the world. Any one of them was free to leave at the slightest desire or interest. I wouldn’t stop one of them. I would be worried about them, but I wouldn’t protest it. It made me angrier because Greg seemed more concerned with Lexi going than he did about me.
To be fair, it was probably because he knows how stubborn I am and how volatile Lexi is. By his thinking, he was probably hoping to sway Lexi so that she would turn on me and try to talk me into going back to their side of the fence. I know that he’s wasting his effort. Lexi isn’t going to switch over to his side. I know that he’s afraid of losing me, but I’m not staying here. I’ve made up my mind. Even if they magically convince Lexi, I know that she’s right. I know what I have to do now. I’ve never seen things more clearly in my life until this point.
When I left the room Lexi was talking about leaving, which was driving both Greg and Noah insane. At that point, Devon was starting to chime in, telling Lexi that she wasn’t thinking clearly and that she needed to sleep on it, maybe take a few days. By his logic, Dayton wasn’t going anywhere, so what was with all the rush? I suppose he had a point, but time was a compromise and that meant that they would only try to push their luck more and more. I don’t think I have it in me to put up the good fight for more days than this. I want to go as soon as possible. I want to put this all behind me and see the open road with Lexi. I hope they don’t get to her.
I noticed as I was leaving that Skye was cleaning the blood off of the table. She looked up at me for a moment with a dark look in her eyes, the kind of look that made me feel bad. She didn’t have the patience to put up with all of this. Skye knew the fate of her family. Her grandparents probably didn’t survive the quarantine. We’d heard reports of the looting and the roaming packs taking whatever they wanted in the quarantine zone, starving inevitably. Her family was right in the middle of all of that, resigned to their doom. I mouthed ‘I’m sorry’ to her as I was passing. She just blinked and nodded to me softly as she went back to cleaning. I don’t think that Skye is going to care if we leave. I think she’s come to accept the world the way that it is, broken and scary.
There wasn’t much to say after telling everyone of my decision. Lying in my bed, I feel like I’m going to throw up. My head is pounding and my heart is racing. I don’t know why I thought that I would be able to sleep after all that happened. Lying in my bed, all I feel is heat wafting off of my body as I lie under the sheets. There was no way that I’m going to be able to get comfortable. I want a strong drink, but the liquor is long gone. I wish I had gotten out of there and not seen the hurt look on Greg’s face.
Basically, I told him that his opinion didn’t matter. Who says that to the one they love? What kind of relationship am I expecting to garner if I tell him that I’m not interested in what he has to say? I went ultra-feminist ninja warrior on him and I know that it’s going to bite me in the ass, it probably already is. I look into the darkness of the room, staring at the drywall. There’s a hole in the wall where Tony, Marko, and Greg got drunk in here one night and accidentally fired off a round from Tony’s Colt .45. That was when we designated an armory and locked up all the weapons. Tony still kept his .45 on him at all times, but everyone else followed the rule. I look at the hole, marveling still that they didn’t kill anyone with that little stunt. I know that it’s morbid to worry about that, but still. Thankfully it just blew a hole into a storage room, fatally hitting a vacuum cleaner and that was it. I often thought of that wall as dying. I know that it’s a silly concept, but it feels like the structure was injured and we’ve just left it that way. It feels like a form of abandonment.
The door to my room slowly opens and I know that it’s Greg, coming to try and talk to me. I can hear everything in this house and it’s not helping with my plan of going to sleep and putting this day behind me. Honestly, this feels like the longest day in my life. It
probably has been. I could tell exactly when Lexi left the room below, all the shouting stopped. What ensued afterwards was a heated debate that rose to some levels of anger and frustration, but never to shouting and screaming like when Lexi was out there. As he steps into the room and softly closes the door, I feel sickened that he’s even here. I don’t want to be with him right now.
Maybe I do, though. I love Greg. He was the guy on campus who liked to play everything. In the summer he threw Frisbees, footballs in the fall, basketballs in winter, and baseball in the spring. He seemed to be great at everything and even when I didn’t understand why he was doing something, like going to the gym every morning at four, I still admired him. He was a man who knew how to relax and I was a woman who only knew how to work. I could never really be relaxed without Greg around. He was my confidant and my best friend. I could burn away hours just lying in bed with him, talking about things. I never expected him to be as well informed as he truly was. Sure, he maintained B’s and C’s in most of his classes, but the man knew about everything that was going on. When I found out that he listened to NPR when he worked out, I thought I was going to die of laughter, but at least it all made sense after that.
I listen as he strips off his shirt and then his jeans, climbing into bed with only his underwear on, just like he always does. He never believed in pajamas or anything remotely similar to that. During the winter, he wore these tattered old cotton pajama bottoms from when he was in high school, and that was it. Sometimes he’d wear a T-shirt if it got really cold, but that never happens in Florida. He moved to the right climate.
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 53