by J. D. Demers
“I’m going to go to bed,” Judy stated. “Goodnight.” She rose and went into the master bedroom. Fish and I had been sleeping in the living room part with the TV. We never questioned why she would want to sleep alone.
“Do you think she’ll ever come out of it?” I asked Fish after Judy retired.
“Come out of what?” he asked, back to his usual harsh tone. I was used to it by now, though.
“Well, she’s always depressed,” I said in a low whisper. “I mean, we talk sometimes, and I like her and all that, but she has this look about her. You know, like she’s given up hope.”
“What do you expect? For her to smile and be happy she’s alive? She’s lost everyone she’s ever known. There’s nothing to come out of.” He pointed at her closed bedroom door, “That is who she is now. Maybe she’ll change into something else, but whoever she used to be died along with her husband and son.”
“Yeah, I guess,” was all I could say.
“We’ve all lost something,” he added. He was staring straight ahead, lost in some strange abyss. It was then that I noticed that he was rubbing a ring with his thumb on his left hand. I wondered how I had not seen that before. I realized he had been married, but decided that asking about her would be a bad idea. I mean, after all, he hadn’t even told me his age yet. I doubted that he wanted to talk about his family.
Fish stood up and walked over to the couch. He did his normal routine, taking off his gun belt and laying it on the end table. He plopped down and put his .45 on his lap.
I sat there in silence and petted Boomer as he snored next to my chair. Fish had a wife. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to know the story. The thoughts of my own family started to surface. My mother was almost certainly dead. After all, she had caught the infection. I was sure my father was dead too. He was at the hospital with my mom. There was no way he could have made it out of there alive. My sister, though… I thought that there was a chance she might still be alive.
Truthfully, my sister would be more adept to this world than I was. She loved guns, hunting, fishing, camping and everything else a boy would like. Those were the things my dad wished I was into. I figured my father just thought our genders were reversed.
You need to find her. My dad’s haunting voice whispered.
Find her? I pushed the whispers out of my head. It’s not like when we were kids and my dad would tell me to go get her for dinner. I couldn’t get out of the city, let alone drive the six hundred or so miles to the Panhandle of Florida. I thought I was losing it. Why was I trying to justify the impossible to my conscience?
I readied for bed. My mattress was on the floor, but well out of reach of Fish’s boots. I lay down and closed my eyes. Boomer snuggled up next to my side, and quickly started snoring again.
Find her kept echoing in my head until I fell asleep.
Chapter 11
Friends or Enemas?
April 8th Morning
I dreamt of my sister that night. Of course, I should have expected that with the thoughts I had as I drifted off to sleep. The dream was about a time in our youth, and how lovely she was. Unfortunately, the end was a nightmare. I would rather not get into it.
I awoke, startled, as Judy’s face was only a few feet from mine.
“You were dreaming,” she said. Her face was calm and caring, so different than how she had been the day we saved her.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking the nightmare off.
“It’s okay. I used to have them,” she said smiling.
I smiled back, but awkwardly. She was acting strange and a little creepy. I looked over to the couch and of course, Fish wasn’t there. He was always up before I was.
“Let me get you some breakfast,” she said as I groggily got off the mattress.
“Thanks Judy,” I said as I moved to the bathroom. I had been changing the bandage on my forearm daily. I knew enough about infection to know that I didn’t want one while there wasn’t a doctor to go see.
Fish had raided a veterinary clinic a few days before and collected a good amount of medicine. I would have never thought of that. Dogs, cats, humans… I guessed there wasn’t much of a difference when it came to health. The area around my forearm was a little swollen. That worried me a little. I made a mental note to take a few of our valuable antibiotics for a couple of days.
Judy had some oatmeal and a glass of warm apple juice waiting for me at the kitchenette table. She was already sitting there, patiently waiting for me.
“Thanks,” I said as I sat down and dug into my breakfast. We hadn’t had a lot of hot meals with the exception of the past few days. For a zombie apocalypse, we had been living pretty well since we moved into ‘Headquarters’ as Fish called it. We had light, a way to have hot food, and even fresh vegetables.
“Where is my husband... my son?” Judy said out of the blue. I was in the middle of chewing a spoonful of oatmeal. Taking as long as I could to swallow, I thought of the best way to answer her. After five days without her mentioning them, I had almost forgotten that we put them both down.
“I-I’m sorry, Judy. They turned. We didn’t…”
“I’m not a fool, son. I know what you and your friend did,” she said, cutting me off. “I… I would just like to pay my last respects. That is,” she paused for a second, “if I can.”
I nodded. There was no sense in beating around the bush. She knew we did something to stop them from coming back. Fish and I dragged them in the front yard and crushed their heads. I had forced Fish to let me bury them. He didn’t help me dig the holes. However he did kill three zombies that were attracted to me while I worked. It hadn’t been easy, though. My arm still hurt from when the scab attacked, although my shoulder felt much better. The holes were only a couple of feet deep, and created two mounds on the edge of the fence line. Judy had not been anywhere near the front of the house since we rescued her.
“We put them to rest, ma’am,” I lied. I did the work, but saw no reason to take the credit. “We buried them in the front yard. I’ll take you out there before we leave today.”
Tears started forming in her eyes, and she got up.
“Thank you,” she said as she patted my shoulder, and then walked back to her room.
“We’re leaving in fifteen,” Fish said as he entered from the garage. “Be ready.”
“Alright,” I said, staring at my oatmeal. I was no longer hungry. Judy had bummed me out.
I gathered up my scavenging gear which included my AR-15 rifle. Fish was bringing his, and I noticed he grabbed six magazines for his .45 along with two boxes of ammo. He never brought that much with him. The weight was not worth it. I didn’t bother asking, but grabbed a few extra boxes of 9mm and made sure my vest was stocked with 5.56 magazines for my AR-15.
He wasn’t that happy about taking an extra ten minutes to let Judy say her farewells, but I didn’t care. Thankfully, he hid his dissatisfaction when she finally came outside, knelt beside the graves, and wept. Perhaps Fish was wrong. This is what she needed. It had only taken her a few days for her scrambled brain to get put back together.
Fish gave me a sign, and I walked over and put my hand on Judy’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Judy. We… we have to go,” I said as softly as I could. “Keep an eye on Boomer for me, okay?” I could tell Boomer wasn’t at all happy that I had left him inside during all of that. He was probably even more upset when he didn’t see me come back in.
She nodded, and got up. She never made a sound the entire time, but the tears were heavy on her face. She hugged me and whispered a thank you before she went back inside.
Fish glared at me, but I ignored him.
“Ready?” I asked, as I moved to the front iron gate. A zombie was approaching from across the street. Taking out my silenced Glock, I spent three rounds before I got it in the head. I had to get used to shooting it with the oil filter. Fish shrugged as he got in the car. I guess I didn’t completely disappoint him.
I jumped in the truck,
after closing the gate behind him, and we headed out of the neighborhood. Most zombies we saw were around the houses as usual, but a few were out, lumbering about. Clouds were forming in the west, which was always a mixed sign. A heavy rain was good, light rain or just overcast was bad.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Judy, but you’re wrong,” Fish said as we got onto the main roads.
“Wrong about what?” I asked. After all, he thought I was wrong about a lot.
“We’re getting too comfortable at that house. We need to start thinking about moving.”
What the hell? He was the one who named it Headquarters. Who names a place they do not plan on staying in? Not to mention it was his idea to go get batteries for the solar panels.
“I’m confused, man. Why the hell are we going to get batteries for the solar panels if we are just going to beat feet and move again?” I asked, openly annoyed.
He shook his head in irritation, as if he shouldn’t have to explain himself to me.
“Yesterday, when I was out, I came across a mobile home. The walls had been caved in. There were about a hundred zombies still milling about, but I’m guessing there might have been a thousand.” He glanced at me as he turned onto a main road. It was the same one that led toward the middle school I had tried to escape to on the day of the Awakening.
“Okay, so a horde of zombies crushed a flimsy trailer. I’m sure it’s not the only one,” I rationalized.
“Exactly,” he said, as if I should get it by now. “These things move around the city looking for food. Sooner or later, they’re going to get wise to our little hovel. Maybe we can handle a dozen or two that come pounding on our walls and fence, but eventually, we’re going to get overrun.”
I finally understood what he was getting at. “So you want to move out of the city?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I didn’t say anything to Judy. She might not be happy about leaving her house. But either way, we have to go.”
I just stared ahead. It was a little upsetting for me. I thought I had done a pretty good job of finding a new home. He was right, of course, both about moving and about Judy.
“You know,” I said, “leaving Boomer there is good and all, but can she even defend herself?”
“Don’t worry kid, while you were crying out to your girlfriend this morning, I showed her how to use your 22 Ruger.”
I was used to Fish being an asshole and had actually started to see some humor in it, but this time he crossed the line.
“My girlfriend?” I returned, rhetorically. “You mean my sister? Trinity? Go fuck yourself, Fish.”
He glared at me, and for a second, I thought he was going to strike me. But his face changed. It was almost as if I had hit him instead. He looked back at the road, his thoughts in another place. Again, I saw him fumble with his ring.
I didn’t understand it at the time, but I felt guilty for saying that. As if telling him off caused his demons to surface.
“She’ll be alright,” he said after a few moments. It was as if the last bit of our conversation had never happened. “I left her one of the police radios as well. Ours are under your seat. Go ahead and strap one on. Use the earpiece.”
I checked under the seat and pulled them out. I was able to easily attach it to my web belt. I grabbed the ear piece and fumbled with it until it snuggly fit.
We were almost to the middle school. A host of trees were off to our left, and I could see numerous figures rocking back and forth in the shade. There might have been a few hundred zombies in there, waiting for the sun to go down so they could comfortably hunt their next meal. In the meantime, though, they had snacked on the low lying branches of the trees.
“Why are we going this way?” I asked Fish. It really didn’t occur to me to ask earlier. I trusted him with this type of stuff. But I was still curious.
“Can’t get there any other way. There are only two other roads leading over the interstate, and they are blocked at the on-ramps.”
We made it to the middle school, only to see that half the FEMA camp had burned down. The school wasn’t any better. Someone had started a fire in one part which had spread through half the building. The cinder blocks still stood, but most of the roof had burnt or crumbled away. I saw quite a few burnt corpses in the fields outside of the school. It was as if they were trying to flee the area while on fire, and collapsed to the ground.
We started turning down some back roads to get away from the main ones. He said that many of the intersections were the scenes of accidents, and that we’re lucky we made it this far without trouble. We were no longer in Palm Bay, but going through parts of Melbourne and West Melbourne. The plan was to hook back south and hit Radio Shack and a nearby auto parts store on the opposite side of the city.
While we drove, I checked in on Judy. She said she was fine, but said Boomer missed me. I reminded her to stay as quiet as she could, and not to go outside until we were back.
We finally reached the area with the Radio Shack. This part of town was heavy with commercial stores and restaurants. My favorite place was just down the road to the east, behind the old Kmart. It was a mom and pop shop called Wagon Wheel. They had the best pizza in town. To the west was the shopping center with The Broken Barrel Tavern and the Save-Some-More that I saw get looted the night before everything went to hell.
Getting through the main intersection before the store was not easy. Cars were backed up heading west toward Interstate 95, and there had been quite a few accidents in the area. We ended up having to cut through the Kmart parking lot, passing the many stores in the giant strip mall. The Radio Shack was located just at the other end of the strip mall. Zombies were not in small supply either. I actually saw some sitting between cars and under various parts of the store’s overhangs, along with the occasional one sunbathing.
We parked right in front of the Radio Shack, and I was happy to see only one zombie was close. It sat in the shade of the building and started to get up as soon as we parked. Fish hopped out and dispatched it with his sledgehammer.
The front door was made of glass and had already been smashed in. When we went in we saw it had been ransacked by looters. I found about half of the different supplies I needed. I was just guessing about the store having the whole list I had made for the solar panels. We decided to leave hoping that we could find some of the electrical supplies in the auto parts store. It was a long shot, though. We’d probably have to break into another hardware store to complete the list.
The Discount Auto Parts was just past Radio Shack between a Taco Bell and Dunkin Donuts. We pulled up in the front. I looked over and saw three zombies staring at us through the broken window of the Taco Bell.
“You work on the door while I deal with them,” Fish said, and motioned toward the zombies that started to come out of the fast food place. “Don’t break the window if you don’t have to.”
I nodded and got out of the truck. We had already agreed to go fully armed into the store. We never knew what we were going to find. I retrieved my small crow bar as I moved toward the door. My hand grabbed at the handle to test it when I noticed burn marks between the two glass doors. It was pretty clear what had happened. The marks were located at each lock; one on the top and bottom, and another one where the bolt lock was.
I heard the quieted ‘clank-clank’ of Fish’s .45 discharge three times. It wasn’t completely silenced like in the movies, but it still greatly reduced the noise. Soon after, I heard his footfalls coming my way.
“Not in yet?” he asked.
“Someone’s already been here,” I said back, and pointed at the burn marks.
“Humph,” he grunted. “Torched their way in. Well, hopefully they left us some stuff.”
I nodded and opened the door. By that time, I had mimicked Fish’s lighting system. I had on a Hurley baseball cap with my own little flashlight attached, and one on the shoulder part of my vest as well. Fish moved in first, and I followed. We moved tactfully, clearing e
ach aisle and then the back room. We did notice things taken off the shelves, but I’ll admit, I wasn’t much of a mechanic and didn’t pay attention to what was missing. I did, however, notice about twenty empty spots where the batteries were.
I started to speak, but a door opened. It had come from behind the back room where there were two double doors leading out of the store from the back entrance.
“Lights!” Fish whispered in a hurry as he rounded an aisle and cut off his flashlights. My reaction time was not nearly as good as his. I moved to another location, but couldn’t get the light on my hat off.
I was ducking down near the socket sets when I heard “Someone’s in here!” Of course, that was when I finally was able to click the flashlight button.
“Get DJ,” a voice whispered, though I could easily hear him in the silence of the store.
The door opened again, and closed. I was conflicted. These were other living people. Why were we hiding? I knew Fish said some people tried to strong-arm him, but we couldn’t go around acting like scared roaches every time we met someone. I couldn’t see Fish, and knew he would more than disapprove of what I was about to do.
“I’m not here to fight,” I said, coming around from the aisle. I let my AR hang free on the single point sling, and had my empty hands up. I could barely see anything in the store, but the entrance to the back room was still open. The silhouette of a figure emerged. He was definitely holding some sort of rifle.
“Stay right there!” he said, nervously.
Light beamed through as the back door was opened again. I didn’t have a view of whoever was coming inside, but it let in enough ambient light to get a decent look at the man with the rifle. He was about my height, but thicker, like he could stand to lose about twenty pounds. His face and clothes were dirty, as if he just finished working in his backyard. He was definitely nervous, and it looked like he didn’t have much experience with firearms. His rifle was being held loosely, which is not recommended when wielding a twelve gauge shotgun.
“Don’t worry, man, I’m not moving,” I said. I was trying to sound confident, but it was hard with this guy carelessly pointing a gun at me. I was more afraid he would accidently pull the trigger than rob me.