Heaping scrambled eggs and canned meat on my plate, I decide that it’s time to load up on protein and carbs before we head out. I’ll eat as much as my stomach can take before I explode. As I look at the plate, I can’t help but feel like I haven’t seen this kind of food in ages. Seriously, I can’t remember eating this much ever. Just looking at it I can feel my stomach rumbling, calling to my mouth and fingers to put some of the food in my stomach. Grabbing my spoon, I reach out and take the first the first spoonful of eggs, lifting the fluffy yellow goodness to my lips, taking in a deep breath before I take my first bite. It tastes so amazing that my stomach actually growls in satisfaction. I think I’m in heaven. In my heaven, the clouds will be made of food and I’ll eat my way straight to Hell. I know that this has to be my fate.
Listening to the others talking, I garner the tales of Noah and his retail exploits before the world ended and I listen to Greg talking about how he used to play football for his high school and was the closest thing to a national hero that they had in his town. The conversation goes everywhere, moderated mostly by Devon. They play the games that most of us have been playing with each other on one on one time, but this time it’s with everyone. They ask what everyone’s favorite movie was, their first kiss, last time they were home, and what they’d do if they could go back for just one day. It’s an exercise in mental health and nostalgia. I don’t care, usually throwing out fluff answers that keep Lexi from calling me out on them, just true enough. All I can think about right now is eating and that’s just what I do. As I stuff my face, I listen to them talk and relish the sounds of what the world used to be like. You forget how great cooked food smells and the sounds of clattering flatware or clanking silverware. They’re the kinds of things that make me wish I was back home with Lexi and our father on Christmas morning. We used to drink hot cocoa while we opened presents, then we’d eat a delicious and unhealthy breakfast, and when night came, we’d have our own dinner and dessert with just the three of us. Christmas was a personal day for all of us. I remember those days fondly as I eat a blueberry muffin. Deep within me, I feel the bite of nostalgia. I miss my father. I hadn’t given him much thought since the Collapse and our retreat to the beach house. I forget how great it was to just be the three of us.
It doesn’t take long to fill me up. I’m actually scared by how quickly I feel my stomach hitting that point where I just want to burst. I don’t stop eating. I know that it’s going to be a long time before I ever see a meal like this again. In fact, this may be the very last time I ever get a chance to have a meal such as this again. Deep down inside of me, that makes me sad. It makes me sad for myself and for everyone else at this table, but truthfully, it’s more than others got. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have what we’ve been given. Not only did my father bring us food, but he also brought us hope. Hope is something that has been slowly ebbing away from each of us. We were just sitting around, waiting to die.
“Anyone else hungover?” Noah asks as he leans forward and takes a drink out of some dehydrated orange juice drink that magically transitions from powder to strange liquid with just a bit of water. He takes a drink, grimaces and then swallows it.
“I am,” Devon answers. “Me too,” Lexi replies.
“Is everyone ready?” I ask, leaning back in my chair. Greg looks at me like I’m some sort of killjoy. Maybe I am, but we already lost one day on getting the radiator and that delay ended up killing Marko. I’m not ready for another mishap. Hangovers aren’t going to make me stay here another day. I’m fine and everyone else will be too. They nod to me and I look over at Lexi. “Is the truck fueled up?”
“Yeah,” Lexi nods, finishing off a biscuit. “Dad had a ton of fuel, probably enough to make the trip two or three times. It’s heavy, so we left it there. Devon said that he’s alright with what they’ve got.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Devon speaks up. “There’s enough in the red tanks we stockpiled when we all came to live here. If anything happens, we’ve got the Sidekick. We’ll be fine.”
“You’re still planning on staying?” I ask him, hoping that he’d reconsider after hearing about the creatures at the Coast Guard base.
“Yeah,” Devon nodded. “Katrina and I talked it over last night. We don’t think there’s anything out there. We think it’s just a matter of dying like Marko did out there or dying here. We figure that we’ve got enough ammunition that if things don’t change, we can go out hunting for supplies like you guys did. Either way, it’s safe here and we’re planning on sticking it out.”
“Even though there’s nothing to stick out?” Lexi beats me to the punch.
“What’s the plan if you get to Dayton and there’s nothing there?” Devon asks Lexi and everyone else at the table who is going with us. “What happens when you show up and your dad was wrong about this Jason or whatever’s out there? Who knows what could happen between now and then? You could lose your supplies, get stranded, or half of you killed off. So how are you going to get back after that? It sounds like suicide.”
“No matter what we do, Devon,” I say to him with grim certainty, “we’re all going to die.” I rise from the table, completely stuffed and beyond. I look at him with an understanding face. I get where he’s coming from, it’s just incredibly narrow minded. He’s a fool and if that’s how he wants to end his life, then so be it. “Do you think with the three of you that you can hold this place if someone shows up looking to take it for themselves? Do you think the three of you are capable of holding off those flesh-eaters? I’m not asking you to be condescending or patronizing, I’m asking you because I’m worried. Do you think you’re capable?”
Devon takes a moment to think about it and finally says, “No.” I look at him with a mild amount of triumph inspiring me to respect that answer. At least he knows that they’re done for. He has that little bit of truth grilled into his head. “But it’s been over a year and no one has come looking for us. I think we’ll be fine.”
“If you’re not,” I tell him with certainty. “We’ll be in Dayton.”
“So I’ve heard,” Devon replies.
“Alright, everyone get the last of the things you’ll need.” I look all of them in the face. I feel like I’m asking them to storm the beach once more. They look at me with faces that are determined, but I can tell that they’re frightened. I’m glad that they’re frightened. It’ll keep them from being stupid, like they were yesterday. “Meet at the truck in twenty minutes.”
Everyone pushes back from the table and scatters, except for Skye who remains at her seat, picking at her muffin. Reloading my Sig, I stuff it in my pack, snatching it up, ready to get on our way. With the new radiator, there is nothing stopping us from getting out of here as quickly as possible. I walk over to Skye and sit down next to her.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” I ask her, hoping that she’ll change her mind. I don’t trust her and Katrina here with Devon. I want them to come with us, to find a new life in Dayton. I don’t want to abandon them here to certain death. Someone will find this place eventually and they will try to take it from them.
“No,” Skye says and I feel cold, icy fingers gripping my throat. “I’m going to stay here with Devon.”
“There might be a future for us in Dayton,” I tell her softly.
“Maybe,” she shrugs. She turns away from her muffin and looks me dead in the eyes and I feel like I haven’t heard her voice in forever. It sounds like it’s rusty, forgotten, and lost. It’s like a ghost of her former voice. She’s been crying, probably all of last night. She smiles sweetly at me but it looks like the kind of smiles that they carved on the faces of the angels at the cemetery. I don’t like the look of it. “I’m going to miss you, Valerie.”
“I’m going to miss you too, Skye,” I say to her as I wrap my arms around her and hold her close to me. She smells like blueberry muffins. “Don’t let Devon walk all over you.”
When we’re done hugging, she scampers of
f to her little corner of the house. I can’t help but feel like this is the second exodus this house has seen and that the last remaining survivors are now the doomed ones. From the moment I heard about Tony’s plan, I felt that he was never going to make it. Now, I feel the same way those staying behind. I stand up and head for the porch upstairs. Pushing open the door, I see Katrina standing out on the deck with her arms wrapped around her chest, looking at the truck below. I stand with her, watching as Henry and Greg fire it up and the engine roars to life like a beautiful roaring lion.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t save Marko,” I tell Katrina.
“I know,” she replies. She looks over at me with a strong smile that comes off as little more than a twitch. “You’re a strong woman, Val. If anyone is going to find a way to save the world, it’s going to be you.”
“I’m hoping that other people already figured out how to save the world,” I smile at her. “I hope that they just need an extra pair of hands.”
“I’m sure they will,” Katrina says as she hugs me. “Don’t forget about us down here. If you find salvation, send them our way.”
“You know I will,” I promise her.
Chapter Fifteen
“This is worse than I could ever possibly imagine,” Henry says as he looks at the remains of a Walmart that has entirely burned in some blaze. The sign is bent at a forty-five degree angle thanks to the truck that plowed into it. The sign looks old and haunted, but the building behind it looks like some photo of a war zone. Henry stares at it with a horrified and distraught look on his face. I look over at him, knowing exactly how he feels. Yesterday was a hard day to get over. Everything was completely destroyed. “Where in the world is everyone? I mean, there had to be people still trying to figure something out, right? Once the government collapsed, I assumed that little communities of survivors would pop up, trying to find some way to survive, but this is completely abandoned. There’s no signs of life anywhere.”
“Not for miles and miles,” Greg says behind the wheel of the enormous truck.
I was the only one who noticed the bloodstains in the floor and seat of the truck when I climbed in and was sandwiched between Henry and Greg. Lexi and Noah took to the back of the truck and I suspect that they’re already fighting with each other. It’s only been a few hours and we’re already more than an hour farther from the beach house than we were yesterday. Henry spent most of the first two hours in complete shock, taking in the ruins of the world he used to know.
“Devon and the others are crazy,” Henry says finally, unable to stop talking now that he’s started. “I mean, if they could see just how terrible everything is, they wouldn’t have stuck around. They’d want to come too. I mean, there’s no hope to any of this. They’re not going to be able to scavenge through this. An entire year has passed and scavengers have already been through everything. They’re screwed.”
“We tried to warn them,” I mutter, pulling my father’s map out and starting to take a look at it.
“I know that it’s a raw subject, but tell me about these monster things you saw yesterday,” Henry says finally. I look up at him and resist the urge to punch him in the face. Not because of the question he just asked, but because I really can’t stand hearing his voice or looking at him still. I try to fight back my violent tendencies, but they’re starting to boil up to the surface. “Come on, I mean, level with me. I’m out here with the rest of you and you know what they are. I don’t want to be taken completely off guard when I see one of them for the first time.”
I don’t answer him. It’s not something I want to talk about.
“They looked like people from the old Holocaust footage you used to see in history classes,” Greg says after a moment, willing to have a chat with Henry over the horrors we witnessed. Better him than me. “They were covered in their own shit and filth, but they aren’t like the walking dead. They’re actually alive, or technically, I guess. They didn’t seem to have anything going on behind their eyes except to eat.”
“Jesus,” Henry mutters. “What could make something like that happen?”
“No clue,” Greg answers halfheartedly.
I stare at the map, envisioning the route that my father took, wondering if it all will look like this. I wonder if there are people the deeper we’ll be going into America. After all, I assume that major cities are still going to have people living inside of them. That would be the locations with the largest scavenging grounds, the most weapons, and the best shelter. The weather was reshaping the entire map with each storm that came and went. Soon, there wasn’t going to be any way of knowing where roads used to be other than by the power lines, fences, and power poles. I stare at my father’s route through Florida.
He went all the way to Gainesville to check out the campus. He’s marked the spot with a circle and a few strange annotations. Over the campus, he put a black cross. I’m not sure what the crosses mean, he’s put one on Atlanta as well, but I don’t think it’s anything important, nothing special at least for the moment. I’m sure it’ll make sense once we’ve been on the road for a while. I imagine that there’s an entire world shaping out here in the wasteland that makes sense to the conditions that now exist, and we’ll be introduced to it soon enough. I imagine that there’s some form of trade, some form of law that has taken over. There must be something.
I remember reading about how conquest wasn’t the most successful form of power there was in the ancient times, that trading empires became more and more powerful as the world transitioned into the high Middle Ages and the Renaissance period. Resources garner support from those who want in on the power and the wealth that it provides. Places like Venice grew into having vast influence over what started as simple merchants and tradesmen. There would have to be people out there like that still, people with lots of food looking to garner support for their protection with a can of peas. I think that it’s the optimism inside of me that pushes to hope that a society exists in some form or another, but so far, we’ve seen nothing. If anything is more apparent than the fact that Florida has been completely destroyed, then I don’t know what is. Maybe Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tampa still have survivors lingering, but the byways are completely barren and vacant. It’s more than a little disheartening.
I look at the map, seeing that my father had blood smeared across one entire side. It makes me a little uncomfortable. I wish I could talk to him for a while. I wish his death hadn’t been so immediate. I would have loved to have heard all that he went through to find us. A heads up about what we’ll be facing over the days to come would be great as well. But his story is lost to us. His wisdom and experience expelled like the flame on a candle in a storm.
Running my fingers along the map’s route, I can’t help but feel completely lost and baffled by the way my father got to us. There are times where he completely abandons every form of road and seems to just drive wherever he wants. At other points, it appears he’s driving to the right or left, parallel to major interstates which makes me wonder if he took a service road or something, but why would he avoid the major arteries of America? If so many people are gone, is it really that terrifying to be on the road? Maybe there are more people out there than any of us would have thought back at the beach house.
My eyes inevitably return to Atlanta, the spot on the map with the most activity. There are symbols, letters, and another black cross over Atlanta. There are flames over the circle surrounding the town and I can’t help but wonder what the heck happened in Atlanta with him. Next to the city is scribbled the annotation: RIP Lindsay. I don’t know who Lindsay is. She might be someone he knew from work or was part of his group heading south. Maybe there was a whole pack of them looking for some kind of salvation in the south while my father looked for his family. Maybe that’s what the black crosses mean. Maybe that’s where he lost people.
As I think about the name Lindsay, I wonder who she truly was to him. My father never dated after my mother died. I don’t remember
her too much, but I do remember my father being completely broken by her. She was his heart and soul. She was his everything. As he lay dying on the dining room table upstairs in the beach house, he muttered her name over and over again. He was a loyal father, the kind that would dedicate his everything to the happiness of Lexi and me. But he never found any form of love again. I know that it’s more common among men who lose their wives to seek out a familiar sense of love and connection, but my father was never like that. He was loyal to my mother all the way to the end. I remember thinking how sad that was and that he deserved better. After the first time I kissed a boy and after I lost my virginity, I remember thinking in the following days that my father deserved that kind of bond, that kind of fun. He was like a monk, living alone with his two daughters, giving them everything he had while he just waited to be reunited with the love of his life, in death.
Whoever Lindsay was, she had to have been important enough to my father to have her immortalized on his map. Then again, she might not even be a woman. Maybe Lindsay was a dog that he kept or a beloved vehicle that he was dedicated to. My father was quirky about naming the things he loved, I guess that was the writer inside of him that compelled him to name inanimate objects. He personified everything he came in contact with that he thought important. It got to a point where it was frustrating as a teenager, but I loved it as a child. Who knows what Lindsay is or was? It’s beyond my ability to find out now, I suppose.
LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Page 61