Age of Z: A Tale of Survival

by T. S. Frost

  So he forced himself to run, and he pushed himself to his limits. He doubted he clocked in at the speeds that an automobile could have managed, but his speed was still impressive, and once he made it back to the freeways without as many obstructions he figured he was making good time.

  Truthfully, despite the urgency of the situation, he found it almost... exhilarating... to cut loose like this. He'd never pushed himself fully to his limits before. Even in that zom run a few weeks back he'd been holding back to stay with Alexa and make sure his friend made it through okay, and his exhaustion then had been born just as much of stress as it was from exertion.

  He'd had plenty of practice subduing his powers, but he'd never unleashed them fully, and it felt almost good to realize he was, at that moment, one of the most powerful things in the world.

  The whole world dead or getting there, his best friend slowly dying in his arms, and he actually had the nerve to feel almost happy. If that wasn't messed up he didn't know what was.

  Maybe he did belong to this world after all.

  Still, that power had its benefits, and by the time dawn hit hours later he was miles away from the town where Alexa had nearly died. Casey hadn't stopped moving for a moment, and only once the light of the sun was fully bathing the world again did he slow down to a fast walk, giving himself a chance to rest a little.

  He was breathing hard from the exertion, and he felt a little tired, but it was easy enough to push away and ignore as long as he eased up a little on himself. It was probably good for Alexa too, who looked exhausted even in her sleep, and could probably stand an hour of not being jostled around so much.

  He kept to that pattern, walking for an hour to keep moving while letting himself and Alexa rest, and then pushing himself for three or four hours at the fastest speed he could manage. He managed keep up a wicked pace running, eating up the miles in a way Alexa probably would have found impressive if she'd been more aware of her surroundings.

  Alexa was becoming even more of a concern for Casey than before, and by mid-afternoon he finally forced himself to stop completely for a couple of hours, for his friend's sake more than himself. Casey was starting to slow, and feel the ache in his muscles from trying to push himself for hours at a time, so the rest was probably good for him–but Alexa was doing far worse.

  Most of her time was spent unconscious now, and it was getting harder and harder for Casey to wake her up, even for simple things like getting her to drink. When she did surface into awareness on her own, she was rarely lucid, and could barely focus long enough to answer simple questions.

  She was hardly aware of her surroundings, or that she was being carried, or even of who was carrying her. When she recognized that somebody else was there at all, it was usually to address Casey by a name that wasn't his own.

  It was a whole new level of alarming for Casey, who had already been shocked by the degree to which a person could fall apart when seriously ill, and that had just been the body–to see it affecting his friend's mind was more than a little frightening.

  The few hours of rest didn't seem to help much, but they at least helped a little, giving Alexa enough time to recover a bit of strength after the run that had to be grueling on her. Casey managed to coax a little water into her, and a few bites of dried ration.

  He even managed to even get an almost lucid conversation out of her, enough to insist that she was going to be just fine and she'd better not give up yet or Casey was going to make her sorry, which had prompted the tiniest quirk at the corner of Alexa's lips before she slipped into unconsciousness again.

  Then the running, again, when they'd both had a chance to rest, and Casey pushed himself well into the night until he could barely force himself to run anymore. There were no less than three harrowing zombie encounters, most of which he managed to outrun and one of which had turned into a serious fight when he'd gotten them backed into a corner by taking the wrong turn at dusk, but they'd gotten out of all of them alive.

  By late night Casey was dead on on his feet, and felt almost like a zom himself. He'd found an abandoned apartment building, broke his way into a sixth floor apartment, set Alexa down on the old mattress in one of the bedrooms, and flopped down next to her to pass out for six hours. When the light of dawn woke him again he still felt tired, but at least refreshed enough to keep pushing himself for a whole new day.

  It all ran together, after a while. Run until you can't anymore. Slow down. Walk. Then run again. Keep pushing yourself. Don't stop for anything. Talk when you can, keep her focused, remind her that she can't give up if you don't. Rest, she needs it, but not too long; you don't have too long. Run again. Just keep going. Go.

  It became a mantra after a while, and by the third dawn Casey found himself moving almost entirely on autopilot. He wondered if it was because he was a clone, if it was because he was human, or if it was just because he was crazy enough to live in this world, that he was able to keep going when he should have stopped a long time ago. But the answer didn't really matter. Neither did the question. He just had to keep going.

  By afternoon of the third day, sixty hours after his forced run began, he began seeing the zoms less, and the packs were smaller, which he thought was a good sign. He wasn't even sure how many miles he'd covered by this point, just that it as a lot, far more than any normal human should have been capable of in two and a half days.

  However, if the zoms were starting to clear out maybe he was getting closer to the base. New Avalon had regularly kept their docks clear and ran small patrols close to their waters; they'd do the same at a land-locked base to protect their people, right? Made sense. It had to. It had to!

  It had to because Alexa hadn't woken up for hours now, not even when Casey tried to shake her awake for more water, and that was bad. When Casey caught the signs of possible habitation, so close, and Alexa was so close to losing despite how hard they'd both been fighting, Casey finally thought, this is it.

  He was running out of strength, but Alexa wasn't going to make it if he didn't push for everything he had. So he gambled it all on one last attempt, and threw himself forward with his last burst of speed.

  He wasn't sure if it had been worth it, until half an hour later he heard an alarmed shout next to him, among the abandoned cars and weeds along the freeway, as he ran ahead with all he had.

  Shouts, however alarmed, were not moans; they were inherently human. Glancing aside he was both surprised and relieved to see people, real people, dressed in hunting uniforms and wielding hunting rifles, and staring at him with wide-eyed shock as he shot past them. One pointed at him, but he was already past them then, and he never did hear what they said.

  He was close now, so close. After everything he'd been through it should have been hard to focus, his mind should have been hazy and dull from over-exhaustion and too much emotion and stress. But he found it all too easy to remember the details and information from the maps Blake had given them, and Alexa's own instructions and descriptions from memory, and now he altered his own course accordingly.

  So close. Almost there. So close–there!

  One last burst of speed sent him flying past a pair of streets and a stretch of barren, open ground that might have been a park, once upon a time, and skidding to a halt before a fortified wall, guarded by soldiers.

  There he stood, panting, clutching Alexa's still, far too subdued body protectively close, and found himself staring down the muzzles of no less than six firearms as the soldiers wielding them stared at him in open shock.

  “Let me in,” Casey growled. His voice was harsh and ragged from too much running and hard breathing, and probably sounded more aggressive than intended, but he couldn't bring himself to care. “Hurry. My friend is sick–she needs help.”

  The guards still looked shocked, and did not lower their weapons, apparently unsure if Casey was actually a threat or not. He grimaced angrily. It was only with supreme willpower, and a reminder that it wasn't every day somebody came running up out of
nowhere–so they were understandably wary–that kept Casey from shoving forward and taking matters into his own hands.

  Then, after a moment, one of them lowered his weapon just slightly and, regarding Casey with bewilderment, asked softly, “W... what are you?”

  Casey blinked at that, and just like before when he had initially pushed his powers to their limits, he was at war with himself. It was both exhilarating and terrifying to be so strong and powerful that people would see him as something extraordinary, as something not from this messed up age of death.

  It was what he was made for. What he was supposed to be. And for a moment he was, just like before, almost... happy. But he shouldn't be. The world was dead and he hadn't been there to stop it and he shouldn't be taking happiness out of it now.

  He shouldn't be at peace when his best friend, his family, who had pulled him out of that pod and encouraged him to make his own place for himself and had risked her own life, was dying, just to ensure that he could.

  It was just too much to think about. So he didn't. The guard was still watching him, a confused, but almost hopeful expression on his face, like he was desperate for someone to hand him a miracle, and Casey just couldn't do it and wouldn't pretend otherwise.

  So all he said was, “I'm just a person. My friend...” He shifted Alexa, still wrapped up in blankets and with only her head visible, just enough so they could understand just how important this was. “She needs help. Now.”

  The guard that had spoken before was apparently elected to be the spokesperson for the rest of them, after a quick glance around. He was the only one to lower his weapon, while the rest of them kept theirs carefully trained on Casey as he moved forward towards the gate, for all the good it might do them. “I'm... sorry, son, but we can't let her through like that–”

  Casey's eyes narrowed dangerously. “'Like that'? She's sick. She needs medicine. Are you going to turn us away?”

  The guard waved his hands in placation, and looked sympathetic when he said, “Well, I can probably let you through, you look fine. But kid... we can't let anybody that's been bit through. It just ain't healthy for everyone inside, see?”

  A feeling of dread iced over in Casey's chest at the words. He remembered passing through New Avalon's gates after a rigorous search that he'd hated every minute of, asking Alexa that simple question: What would have happened if one of us got infected?

  They wouldn't get to come in.

  The subdued, haunted tone in Alexa's answer had been enough to make him stop asking, and put a chill up his spine at the same time. And these people thought...

  But they were wrong. “She wasn't bitten,” Casey snapped back, more defensively than intended. “She's just sick.”

  “Hear that a lot,” one of the other guards said, less sympathetically than the first. “Still can't let you pass.”

  Casey's eyes narrowed. “She wasn't bitten,” he growled, more aggressively this time. If they'd been familiar with him at all, the warning tone in his voice would have been enough to make them rethink their actions. “She's just sick. You have zom dogs? Bring them out. You'll see.”

  “Kid, we really can't,” the first guard said grimly. “I'm sorry, but–”

  “But if you keep pushing this, we'll have to push back,” the second guard said flatly. He gestured with his weapon. “Most of us don't like the mercy shot policy, but we'll still do it to protect everyone inside.”

  Mercy shot. They wouldn't get to come in.

  They wouldn't–except, Casey realized, they would. It wasn't really their fault completely–they were protecting a fragile community from a very deadly infection–but they were being idiots, all of them, and he wasn't going to stand for it anymore.

  So he shifted Alexa very, very carefully to one arm, cradling her close and shifting his body so that even if these idiots did try to shoot, they'd be hitting Casey. And with his free hand he reached out and, without so much as looking at what he was doing, slammed his curled fist into the stone wall bordering the thick metal gate into the colony.

  He barely felt the impact, but the wall gave slightly beneath his fist as he withdrew it, and he heard the sharp snap of stone as spiderwebs of cracks spread out across its surface, and he heard small chunks of rock thumping to the ground.

  The guards were all staring again, wide-eyed at his display of strength. Casey turned to meet the first one eye to eye, his icy eyes burning with barely contained fury.

  “Now you know,” he said slowly, precisely, the low rumble in his voice predatory and dangerous, “What I can do to this place. This was nothing. And if you do not stop being idiots and help her, you won't have any walls left to protect you.”

  The guards paled. The more argumentative one swallowed, but said after a moment, “We'll shoot you first.”

  Casey snorted once; it was as good as a laugh to him. “It won't do you any good. You'll just waste your ammo. More importantly, you'll make me mad.” He bluffed, not certain how much damage bullets might do to him. He shifted Alexa again, away from the muzzles of the guns as much as he could. “And if you hurt my friend in the shootout...Well, same promise applies, no matter how you morons kill her.”

  The men were silent for about thirty seconds. They still kept their weapons trained on Casey's head out of habit, but were glancing back and forth between each other nervously. Casey kept his gaze unrelentingly firm on the first guard, teeth bared as though ready for battle, every muscle in his body tense.

  If they really tried it... but no, the first guy, at least, had sense. Casey listened to his heart patter nervously, and then after a moment the guard ordered, “Somebody go get a pair of zom dogs. If she passes we'll let you in. Fair?”

  “Hurry,” was Casey's only answer. The man nodded, sweating slightly, and looked like he wished Casey would look anywhere but at him. Well, too bad for him.

  The dogs arrived quickly with their handlers. Casey wasn't worried about passing and stepped between the animals still carrying Alexa without so much as a whine or a bark from either of them. The guards seemed stunned, and the more argumentative one looked a little ill when he realized just how close they'd come to serious trouble over nothing at all.

  Casey ignored him, stepped past without giving him so much as a look as they cracked open the metal doors to give him access to the colony. The only thing he said to any of them was, “I need a guide to whatever medical facility you have.”

  The guard that been appointed spokesman escorted Casey himself.

  It was only once he'd fully stepped inside and was halfway through the colony trailing after his guide, not even paying attention to his other surroundings, that he realized it. They'd made it. It hit him suddenly, in a combination of shock and exhilaration.

  They'd done the impossible. Alexa was still breathing, her heart was still beating, and they'd made it here against all odds. They'd made it and Alexa would survive, she had to, they had access to the help she needed and it would be the worst joke in the world for her to die here and now.

  It was ironic really; Casey had just run over a hundred miles in a bare two and a half days, carrying his friend the entire way to try and save her. By any definition of the term, it was a heroic act. And now that they were there and there was nothing more he could do he'd never felt felt so useless in his life.

  But they'd made it. He'd done something worthy of the title of hero and didn't even care. He'd given his friend a fighting chance.

  That was all that mattered.

  Chapter 15

  Waiting, Casey discovered, was something he really, really hated doing.

  It hadn't been so bad for that week at New Avalon, but he'd had friends he trusted all around him, and everybody he'd cared about was safe. He was in no rush to get anywhere, and it didn't really matter just how long he hung around the island before being given permission to leave by its leader.

  But this was different. It was a nerve-wracking and agonizing wait, a wait that he, could do little to alter or speed
up, and he loathed it. Especially when what he was waiting for was the sight of his friend, waking up and finally being okay.

  Alexa had cut it very close, Casey had discovered, when he'd finally ducked into the medical facility at the colony–which he'd discovered very quickly was referred to simply as the Base–and handed his unconscious friend over to the medical personnel. They'd been stunned at Alexa's condition, seemed genuinely surprised that she was still alive, and expressed concerns that for all their efforts the sick teenager might not make it.

  They'd done their best to help anyway, without even requiring any threatening or trade just yet, which Casey was grateful for. The medical facility wasn't the best, lacking equipment and manpower. But the people there were trained professionals, and kept a tight ship, meaning the place was protected, safe, and sanitary.