Dead Hearts Grow Cold: A Post-Apocalyptic Novella

by Stacey Slothlief

  “Talk,” said Ben.

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  The two of us spent the next hour or so learning each other’s stories; I told her about Ben, Noah and my mom, though I was careful not to tell her about Ben’s immunity or the vials he brought with him from the CDC. She told me how she lost her mom in a car accident a few years back, and how she used the outbreak to finally escape from her shitty stepfather. She said now she was heading to Savannah. She’d heard from a sailor in her previous survivor party that the best move was to take one of the boats off the docks down there and head south, possibly to one of the islands off of Florida - but only if you’re well stocked with food, and tremendously lucky. Neither of us had heard anything substantial about the rest of the world, or even the country, but knowing the speed at which the infection ravaged Georgia, I was pretty open to the theory of real safety being only off the mainland. After we had hashed everything out, the moon was already high in the sky, so we decided we could camp together for the night and decide a plan of action in the morning. I went to the room where Noah and Cooper were already cuddled up in, while Freja took the other room to herself. Ben chose to sleep in a chair outside our room, facing Freja’s door. Apparently he still had his doubts.

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  I awoke the next morning stiff and tired. I let Noah and Cooper have the bed to themselves and chose the rug on the floor, and my back was letting me know that it did not appreciate my generosity. I walked out of the room to see Ben still sitting outside in his chair, staring intently at the other bedroom door.

  Did he sleep at all last night?

  I tapped him on the shoulder, making him jump slightly as I broke his trance.

  “Morning,” Ben shot me a vacant look as I started speaking, “we should talk before the girls wake up.” He nodded, and I led him out the front door into the all-too-familiar glaring sun. I’m not sure what I was expecting from this conversation, Ben and I haven’t had actually talked in weeks, but I knew I wanted to let Freja come along with us, and I also knew that Ben was not going to let that happen so easily. We walked to the near corner of the block. Alright, here goes, “Ben, look...”

  “She’s your responsibility. I’m not letting you or Noah get hurt.” Ben stated, looking me square in the eye. For the first time since we set off I caught a glimpse of my big brother, or at least of how he used to be. His eyes were veiled by sadness and fatigue, but deep down there was determination and strength. For that brief moment, I felt like he was back with me again, like I was looking at family. He maintained eye contact for a few seconds longer, then turned and headed back towards the house.

  I stood in the middle of the road, shielding my eyes as I turned and stared towards the east. Five miles until the highway. Five miles until more people, more clues. Five miles closer to Mom. For the first time in weeks I felt hopeful, a feeling that had become foreign, almost unwelcome in our situation. We gained another member for our group, someone I could talk to, who has been even more alone than I have been the last couple of months. Freja didn’t just mean an extra set of eyes or another weapon or an additional mouth to feed, she was someone new. She meant new stories, new ideas, a new start on our stagnating journey and a new sign of better things to come. Plus, it didn’t hurt that she was my age. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, basking in the glow of the newly risen sun. Today is going to be a good day. There’s even a cloud or two on the horizon.

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  By the time I started back to the house, the other three had already packed everything up and were on their way out the front door, with Cooper bouncily bringing up the rear. Freja was third in line with what was likely her personal stash. I guess Ben already delivered the good news, I would have liked to see that conversation. I let Ben pass by with the wagon, giving him an unreciprocated nod of thanks. Noah was a few steps behind, and offered an exaggerated wink before she jerked her head slightly backwards. I rolled my eyes back at her.

  Awesome.

  I started walking once Freja reached me, and kept pace so we were side-by-side.

  “So we’re only about five miles from I-75, and we can take that for a while south before it splits off towards Savannah, I figured we might as well stick together until one of us changes our mind,” I held out a stick of jerky as a sort of peace offering, but she refused.

  “Thanks, but I got my own,” she smiled at me as she pulled a sizeable bag of peanuts from her pack. I returned her smile and jogged up ahead to Ben. I offered to take wagon duty from him, but he refused as well. I guess the years of football training were proving quite useful here. This was definitely not what he had planned to do with his life, but I couldn’t be more grateful, I wanted to stay in back today, anyways.

  We spent the next hour or so steadily pushing toward the highway. The rapid ascension of the sun led us to believe we had travelled much further than reality beheld, so once the broad horizon of hot asphalt finally came into view, still a mile and a half from where we stood, the sighs of disappointment were uniformly exasperated. I stopped for a moment to gather myself. I had spent so much time getting to this point, but I haven’t put any thought into what we were going to do once we got to the highway - other than walk, of course, but that’s what we have been doing for months. We haven’t fought more than one or two Reds at a time since we left the city limits; there is absolutely no way any of us are in better shape than we were at the beginning of this mess. Moreover, other than Freja, we haven’t met with strangers since the group that may have seen Mom. It’s safe to say that we lucked out pretty nicely with Freja - I was milliseconds away from being sliced in half upon our first encounter. I’d hate to run into somebody who was even a tad more disagreeable.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  Either way, we didn’t come this far to turn around now, we haven’t known what the future held for us since Ben first got bit, no reason to let a little uncertainty scare me at this point. I shook my head - a little more violently than intended - and took a sip of my canteen. I must have spent longer than I thought mulling everything over, or else the sight of the highway made the others move much faster. I broke into a moderate jog. I was immediately out of breath.

  Seriously? I’ve changed.

  Being thinner than ninety-nine percent of the population of Georgia was almost entirely advantageous until the sun zapped away the small amount of body fat I had in the first place. I can only imagine how happy those chubby bullies from elementary school are now, hopefully the Reds went for them first. I caught up to the others several seconds later, but I stopped a few steps shy of the back of the line so Freja couldn’t hear me struggling for air.

  As I stepped onto the pavement, I could feel the heat of months of baking emanate all the way to my thighs. The lack of shade or foliage made the highway at least ten degrees hotter. Abandoned cars and trucks lined both sides of the median, though every vehicle seemed to be heading south, likely to get as far away from the city as possible. It seems like most people got off the highway quickly and safely, but I could already make out a mangled corpse about 50 yards back, suggesting that there must have been a decent amount of Reds here as well. I pulled out the binoculars to get a closer look. Sure enough, even without most of the skin on their face you could tell that the poor soul’s head had been bashed in. From what we’ve seen far too many times, large groups of people tend to shed their weak to the predator when even just a few of them are in pursuit. Freja brushed my arm and asked for some of my water, snapping me out of my haze. The surprise reminded me of my lapse in caution when we first met.

  Always check under the cars.

  I prepared for this situation before we left the house, luckily. I walked over to the wheelbarrow and from it wi
thdrew a walking stick I had found that turned out to be quite suited for my height. I dug through my pack and took out a folding hand mirror. Threading the top of the cane through the handle of the mirror, I was able to position the mirror about two inches from the bottom of the cane. I rotated the head of the mirror so that it was at a forty-five degree angle to the ground and stood up. I placed the butt of the cane next to the first car on my right as the others looked at me, confused. Sure enough, I could see directly under the car, as well as the car next to it. I gave myself a silent nod of approval and turned back to the others, who although had seemed to have realized what I was doing, were not visibly impressed. Slightly hurt and increasingly cranky, I started walking south down the highway, glancing down at the mirror with each new car.

  “Come on, let’s find a place to rest for a bit.”

  We walked for about an hour before we found an exit with any reasonable shelter nearby – this time in the form of a Wal-Mart about three miles off the highway. The big stores always disappoint. The first place everyone seemed to go when the infection hit was Wal-Mart, or Target, or Krogers. The less resourceful – or more optimistic – ones hit the Best Buy’s and Apple Stores. The crazy ones went straight to the gun shops, apparently the munitions selection at Wal-Mart wasn’t good enough for them. As we approached the big blue-and-white sign poking over the trees, I started planning out our next move; the sun was already on its way down, we probably had about one, maybe two hours of good walking time before we’d have to find somewhere to stay the night. Looking at the others, it was obvious the initial sprig of energy from this morning was gone, and judging by the last several miles, there was no way of knowing where the next habitable rest area would be. As much as I hated ending our first day on the new road like this, I realized that we have no choice but to call it an early night once we made it inside. Finally, the superstore came into view, Coop noticed a few seconds before the rest of us did, and began barking furiously. Ben held an arm up, signaling us to stop. The front of the store was strewn with bodies, the carnage becoming more concentrated at the center of the face of the building. A strong breeze passed by, bringing with it the unmistakable stench of death. I tried my best not to gag as I squinted my eyes, trying to discern further what happened here. As my gaze reached what I could assume were the only set of front doors, I could make out a thin wisp of smoke rising from the pile of bodies. I turned to the wheelbarrow, but Ben seemed to have had the same idea, he grabbed the binoculars out of our pack and put them to his eyes. I glanced back at the others; Noah was vomiting into a bush a few feet away, Freja had her sword at her side, her jaw clenched, Cooper had stopped barking, and had his head low to the ground, whimpering softly. I felt something bump my left shoulder, causing me to jump a little higher than was probably acceptable. Ben was handing me the binoculars, still looking ahead, unperturbed by my skittishness. I took the binoculars from Ben and looked back at the front door. Sure enough, there was a decent amount of smoke rising from the area, but it wasn’t from the bodies themselves, but from the truck that had crashed into the front of the building.

  What the hell is going on?

  “The door,” said Ben. I realized up until now, I hadn’t actually seen the set of glass doors, and that’s when I noticed it. The area where the doors normally are was completely covered in steel.

  That explains the car, Wal-Mart really stepped up its security, Jesus.

  I handed the binoculars off to Freja and edged closer to Ben.

  “I didn’t see any Reds,” I said, hoping to elicit a response.

  “Nope,” Ben responded. Close enough.

  “We should go around the back, there’s probably a loading dock or something. It’s already getting dark.”

  “That might not work, either,” Freja put the binoculars to my eyes and pointed my head to the right side of the building, where there lay a few more bodies in front of a blood stained steel service door. “What about back there, though?” She asked, pointing my head to the back right of the property. There stood a cement shed-like structure, it looked untouched by all the chaos surrounding the store.

  “Worth a shot,” I hung the binoculars around my neck and started towards the parking lot, staying as close to the surrounding trees as possible, in case Ben and I had overlooked something. The closer we got to the store, the stronger the smell became. The taste of fifty-plus rotting, sun-baked bodies was doing its damndest to force its way onto my tongue, so I held my breath and quickened my pace. The others followed suit, fighting the same battle, we did not have the time nor the rations to lose our lunches all over the pavement. We arrived at the door of the structure, and my hammer made quick work of the padlock keeping us out. Inside was a spiral staircase. We took out our flashlights and slowly descended, closing the door behind us. At the bottom we found a hallway that stretched further than our lights did, but it was heading in the direction of the store, so on we went. The terrible stench was gone from the air, though it still lingered in the back of my throat. We haven’t seen that many dead since we left the city, but we’ve definitely encountered something like that before. Sadly, the scent of death is not something one can get accustomed to. The hallway ended at an ascending staircase, with another steel door awaiting at the top. It took a few swings to get the doorknob off, leaving me disappointingly sore in my shoulder, but once the door swung open we found ourselves basking in the dimly-lit glow of Georgia’s last remaining superstore.

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  We spent far longer than we should have staring agape at our new surroundings. Not only had the steel barricade out front kept the horde of survivors from ransacking the place, but until now, nobody had seemed to be able to figure out any other entrance, as the store remained fully stocked. Other than the orange emergency lights replacing the normal bright fluorescent ones, I could swear the place was set up for its grand reopening, once everything goes back to normal, of course. Even the smell brought me back to when Mom would bring Ben and I shopping with her. Freja was the one to to take the first step, dazily walking down the linoleum aisle lined with children’s clothing before countless rows of shelved merchandise towering high above us. I watched as she walked forward, looking left to right, gazing with wonder at all the untouched goods; running her fingers through a shirt on the rack, tapping the plastic on a Barbie doll case on display, completely enveloped in childish amazement, it was nice. Once she was about sixty yards away from us, she stopped, her expression changed. Suddenly, she took off to the left. Shit, I thought, and I sprinted after her, my shoes squeaking loudly against the linoleum. I pulled out my hammer, preparing myself to protect her from whatever she just saw. I almost stumbled as I stopped myself outside her aisle, and saw her crouched down over something, still and silent. Slowly, I approached her, craning my neck to get a better view, and the moment I breached her field of vision, she held out her left hand containing a single Hostess Cupcake. Ben and the others got to our aisle before I had a chance to take my gift, and Noah quickly seized the opportunity to accept the offering, devouring it in one bite. My tinge of jealousy was mediated in as much time as it took for me to take in the sheer multitude of sugary food products around us. Honestly, I had forgotten most of these things even existed. As quickly as the resourceful survivors snatched up everything with a semblance of nutritional value, the gluttons swiped everything else. I put my hammer on the shelf next to me, grabbed a box of Zebra Cakes and ripped it open before Ben grabbed my wrist.

  “Scout first, then do whatever you want.” He said, letting go.

  Begrudgingly, I set my Cakes back on the shelf, and immediately felt a stronger grasp on my other wrist.

  “Quit wasting time, let’s go!” Said Freja, smiling, and she bolted down the aisle, almost tearing my arm out of its socket, though I somehow managed to grab the hilt of the hammer before I was yanked away. Still in Freja’s grasp, we crisscrossed through the next
several aisles - beverages, kitchenware, bedding, toiletries - then made our (her) way to the clothing racks. Freja darted between kiosks of clothing like a doe in the forest, lowering her head or brushing away some shirts to reveal any possible lurkers. As important as it was to pay attention so as to not get railed by a thousand clothes hangers, I kept finding myself getting distracted every time I caught a glimpse of Freja’s face. Every time she would turn her head, her eyes, her smile, with her impossibly white teeth, shone so bright I couldn’t help but smile myself. I had never seen anyone so happy, and it radiated off of her so strongly I could feel it making its way through my own body. Warmth flowed from where her hand held my wrist, up through my chest and manifested itself in the first genuine smile I had had since before I could remember. When we finally made it back to Ben and Noah, I could feel the veins in my wrist fighting back against Freja’s fingers with each successive beat. I tried to slow my breathing to keep my heart under control - we did just run around an entire Wal-Mart - but Freja let go of my hand once Ben and Noah turned to greet us.