by Briana Rain
“What, surviving?”
Okay, that was snarky. He didn't deserve that much snark right now.
I'm good. I'm fine. I'm alive. It's cool. I'm cool.
“Worrying me like that.”
Oh.
Well, actually, not oh. Because it does make sense that he'd be worried about me. I mean, if something happened to me, there'd be a slim to none chance of Clyde getting back in the group. And before, he needed us to get to Chicago. Now, he needed us to get out of it. I’d be worrying about me too if all of that depended on me.
Then, he walked away to pick up his things, his rifle strap falling to his elbow once again as he tried to keep it on his shoulder. I was about to take my bat out of it's stupid spot behind my back, but decided to keep it there for one more moment.
“Here.” I walked over as he finished picking everything up.
I told him to put the strap in place, and since there was no adjuster, I pulled on the fabric and made a knot, so that it wouldn't fall. At least not as much.
Hopefully.
He nodded, mumbled a thanks, and started walking down the street again. I followed him as we crossed it, to the side of the street opposite of where we’d started in the parking lot and across the first street we’d encountered. Clyde and I stood under a huge building. It just towered over us. I was too busy taking in all the intricate carving and stonework that made up the tower to notice that Clyde had stopped walking too. He, too, was looking at the building like I was.
It was as if both of us were seeing it for the first time, which concerned me. I was under the impression that Clyde had been there before, and therefore would know where he was going.
“This is it.” He said.
I choked on my breath, or spit or whatever, and had some sort of five-second coughing fit.
“This? This can't be it...”
The building was, wait... nineteen stories. Nineteen. Unless I counted wrong, which is a huge possibility. Either way, it was an impossibly big apartment building. As in, used to be filled with people apartment building. Who knew what filled it now.
“I know... I know... I didn't remember it being this... This big when I was here...” He looked and sounded like he was in disbelief too.
“Christ, Clyde...” I shook my head, thinking of the odds of everything.
The odds that his family would even still be in there. That we would or wouldn't run into Crazies. That everything would go all right or all wrong.
“You don't have to do this, you know.”
Clyde was looking down at me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the building.
“Shut up, Salmons.”
His last name was a fish. How natury. How southern. Were salmon even in the south? And a much better question: isn't the plural form of salmon just salmon?
He let out an exasperated breath and took a step forward. I threw my arm out to stop him, still staring up. There was nothing I could do now to control my anxiety.
“My name’s Ophelia, by the way. I think you should know before we do this.”
He looked down at me, and now I struggled to keep staring up at the building instead of facing Clyde.
When I couldn't stand his stare anymore, I put my arm down, lowered my gaze to the front doors, and walked inside, accepting my fate.
Chapter 15: Addeline
“Her name’s Addeline.” Clyde said.
I pushed open the unlocked and unbroken glass door and warily stepped inside.
“My sister's name. Addeline.”
I heard him, but didn't acknowledge what he’d said. I was too busy cringing at every step I took, as my feet were echoing on the non-carpeted floor. It was fancy, like marble or something.
Clyde, on the other hand, was as silent as something that wasn't even there.
He led me to the staircase easily enough. I mean, it was a door marked STAIRS in big, red letters and was right next to the elevator. He didn't talk, I didn't talk, but my head felt like it was going to explode again. It was too quiet, and my heartbeat was too deafening.
Was my breathing as loud as I thought it was?
I kept glancing behind me, afraid something, infected or healthy, would sneak up. Just afraid in general, I guess.
The stairs were starting to get to me by the time we reached the sixth floor. By the eighth, the burning sensation in my legs was really getting to me. Combined with the endless stairs, and the silence, I was starting to lose it. The hoard we’d seen earlier was long out of range and there was nothing reaching my ears except for my breathing.
Do Crazies have enhanced hearing? Can they hear-
We were just starting the stairs going from the ninth floor to the tenth when the shrieks started above us. Both of us froze, like idiots, and listened to the shrieks and screams building up. I wondered how far above us they were and which floor we were going to.
The pain in my chest increased.
A door banged open above us, and someone/something stumbled out onto the stairs. A shriek answered my question as to what it was. Clyde reacted before I did, but it was probably only by a nanosecond or two. He grabbed my hand that rested on the railing and started booking it up, not caring about the noise. The Crazy heard us, roared, and threw itself down the stairs with many thuds. No sooner than the door it came from clicked shut, it was thrown open by an unknown amount of its friends following its lead by the amount of thuds I heard.
I thought, or hoped, that the tenth floor would be where this insane mission ended, because we were right there and that would have been fine and dandy with me. Alas, he kept pulling on my wrist, climbing more and more stairs. Climbing closer and closer to the Crazies.
You know, typically, the response would be to run away from whatever's trying to kill you...
Between us going up and them coming down, they had to have been right on top of us. I doubted if we’d make it to the eleventh floor exit, let alone something above it. The distance got shorter and shorter. Closer and closer.
Then just like that, we burst through the eleventh floor door and into a hallway. Clyde shoved me ahead of him, not even glancing at the hall, and locked the door behind us. When he pushed me ahead, I stumbled a few steps, and when I looked in front of me, I was greeted with an ear-shattering roar. The sight of a Crazy’s open, infected, drooling, rotten mouth, wasn’t even three feet away from me and it was closing the little distance between us. I screamed, turning my face away, and instinctively brought my bat up to smash its skull in. It collapsed on the first hit, with its skull having the integrity of a rotten grapefruit, but not before it's outstretched hand grasped my earring that I completely forgot I had, and tore it from my skin. My bat hit its head, it's head hit the wall, and it was no longer our problem.
CrackSquishBangThunkRipWhoosh
Except, it kind of was still my problem. I didn't puke, but that was probably because I couldn't breathe. Seriously. My breaths were short and quick, but they might as well have not been there at all. My chest hurt as much as my ear.
“Ophelia! O— shit.” Clyde entered my field of vision.
CrackSquishBangThunkRipWhoosh
He sounded worried, but I couldn't think straight.
Were things getting blurry? Nah. They couldn't be…
I'm okay. I'm good. I'm fine.
“Hey, hey now come on.” He said. You're alright.”
I don't think that I am.
CrackSquishBangThunkRipWhoosh
At the end of those images, a new one was added. A sound didn't accompany it, because it was drowned out in my scream. I’d never been that close to a moving Crazy, and I wouldn’t soon forget it.
Clyde had his hands on my shoulders and was trying to get me to focus, but I couldn't process… Couldn't…
CrackSquishBangThunkRipWhooshScreamCrackSquishBangThunkRipWhooshScream
Something warm and sticky and gross ran down my neck. That something was probably blood. My blood.
Blood?
Clyde was leading me
somewhere and somehow my feet were moving. Somehow.
“Addy!” Clyde yelled. “Addy open up! Please be in here…” Clyde was panicking now, letting the fear in that he could afford to. He was so easy going before because he didn't have anything. He wasn't accountable for anything or anybody. But now he did.
I guess my scream was loud, like, really loud, because Crazies were banging on the stairwell door and on some of the apartment ones. I supposed I should’ve been getting ready to fight, but I still couldn't find any O2 in all the air I was taking in. I felt like I was just breathing in the same pocket of air over and over and over again, with the wardrobe that contained all of Narnia balanced carefully on my lungs.
As well as having infected drool nearly spit on me, I got an extremely good look at the Crazy when we were up close and personal in the hallway. Its face was like Swiss cheese, with bloodied, rotting, oozing holes right down to the bone. It was the stuff that not even my nightmares could’ve come up with.
It eliminated any and all thought or hope I had that those things were alive.
Something, or some things, were moving on the other side of the door, and then it opened. By a living person whose first instinct wasn't to tear us apart and eat us.
CrackSquishBangThunkRipWhooshScream
“Clyde?”
I heard a southern accent, but less pronounced than the one I was familiar with, and also female.
Clyde pulled, not pushed, me through the doorway. I guess he had learned a lesson. Then the two quickly re-barricaded the door with stacked furniture and a shower rod wedged between the door handle and the wall. I moved my hand up to where one of my favorite earrings once was, but was now replaced with a hole, blood, and raw flesh.
I felt blood, and tried to hold it all back while Clyde and his sister embraced each other, grateful that the other was alive.
CrackSquishBangThunkRipWhooshScream
Someone led me to one of the last pieces of furniture that was not used in the barricade, which was a large, leather couch. I think it was too big to wedge into the space where the door was.
I rested my elbows on my knees and put my head in my hands. I felt like a lung was gone. That had to be it. I had only one lung and that was why my chest hurt so much, why it felt like something big had collapsed on me and that my ribs were going to cave in.
It played in my head over and over. All of the death. That Crazy's face when it was right there. Right there. So close I could smell its breath, which was absolutely, indescribably horrid. I could see its teeth, and the little red webbing that went into the iris from the red dominating the surrounding area.
I could see Clyde. He was standing… wait, no. Kneeling in front of me with his freezing hands on my shoulders again, trying to talk to me. I was sitting up now, watching his lips move, and hearing his voice… But my god, my brain couldn't decode what he was saying for the life of me.
Addeline came into the picture. There was a sharp sting on my cheek.
“Christ, Addeline!” Clyde spun towards his sister.
“What the hell?” I asked at the same time Clyde talked, confused, but more aware of my surroundings now. I could get some oxygen into my lungs and to my brain now, which helped me think clearer, even if it was just by a bit or two.
“No. No, it's okay. It's— I'm okay.” I blinked once, twice, sold.
“What's going on Clyde? Why’d you bring a kid with you?”
Addeline looked to be in her mid-twenties, with darker hair than Clyde’s. It was closer to the shade of mine, actually. Her skin was tan, but not as much as her brother’s, probably from living in the city.
“Addeline, can we talk for a second?” Clyde asked.
They both glanced uneasily at me, and I got the feeling that I wasn't wanted. Like I wasn't supposed to be here.
Addeline sighed, but nodded. She then went to the kitchen, which wasn’t separated from the living room, grabbed a towel that was hanging off of the oven handle, and tossed it to me. I made no sudden move to catch it, and it landed next to me. I scooched over and l picked it up, first wiping off the blood smears on my hands, then the drips down my neck, and finally, with shaking hands, I held the cloth to my ear lobe, which was hanging on by a string.
Addeline went down a short hallway and into a room, where I couldn't see, with Clyde following closely. I heard a door close but could still catch a few words here and there, even though the voices were muffled and quiet.
“Gone… yes… all of them… bat out of hell… I had to… dead… I'm sure…”
“What?” Clyde had broken the unspoken “indoor voice” rule. Directly after that, I heard a dull thud and glanced at the apartment door.
There were more exchanges, this time they were faster. One or both of them sounded panicked.
“Her… leave…”
My eyes were concentrated on the floor as I tried hard to eavesdrop. It sounded like they were figuring out with what to do. Making plans.
Without me.
“Well we can't—“ Addeline’s clear, raised voice that was most definitely not her indoor voice, was cut off by a door, most likely the one to the stairs, blasting open with the force and sound of a gunshot. I jumped and whipped my head towards the door, as the two southerners silently ran out of the room, weapons drawn. Clyde with his shovel and his sister with a huge bow that had a bunch of wheels and strings. Fortunately, the door to Addeline Salmons’ apartment remained closed, as in, not forced open by anything. There was a synchronized sigh of relief from all of us.
“Cl—“
“Addy, listen.” Clyde interrupted, coming over to me.
He looked at my ear, and cringed. I guessed, from the feel it, and Clyde’s confirming look, that my description of it holding on by a string was somewhat accurate.
“Addy, without her and her family, I'd still be starving, on day two of no water, and still in Indiana. They’re good folks. They gave me food and water and drove me up here, taking a detour from their plans so that I could find you. They said that once I found you, we could both join up with them again, and that's why the kid is here.”
During Clyde's truly inspiring speech about the Astor’s kindness, I almost passed out. He’d been trying to get a better look at my ear, but I kept flinching whenever the towel moved. Every time I flinched, he would stop, and the cycle would continue. I wished he would just get it over with already. Or better yet, Addeline would do it.
“For god's sake Clyde.” She muttered, and took the towel from her brother, telling him to do something useful and gather some things from around the apartment.
She wasn't as gentle, or, gentle at all. I think I may’ve blacked out for, like, a second, but who knows.
When Clyde came back with the supplies, Addeline didn't argue with him about me or going with me and my family.
“Okay. So we have to find a way out of this building. Any ideas, Ads?”
She stopped what she was doing to glare at him. Even though her face was facing away from me, I could still tell that it was a glare.
“Just the doors, and the windows. Looks like we're just gonna have to wait this out.”
Oh, she was not happy. Not happy at all.
Again, I felt like I was intruding. Is this how Daniel felt in the lion's den? My heart goes out to you, Danny.
There were still a lot of Crazies out in the hallway, absentmindedly slamming themselves into doors and back out to the stairwell. A few times, one would smash into Addeline’s door, but that was it. There weren’t any real attempts to get in, and they all went on their merry ways.
The apartment was nice, and I wondered how it would look with all of the furniture in its place. All the living room furniture had same color scheme, which consisted of a pretty, dark green color. The kitchen looked like it was once well-stocked, but the pile of food on the counter wasn't quite as much of a pile as it was a single row. There were empty nails on the wall, where paintings, and pictures probably once hung, and a makeshift fireplace in t
he corner.
The bathroom was most likely in the hallway, since I couldn’t see it from where I was sitting.
Addeline wasn't a bad person. Her helping me with my ear proved that much. I think her dislike of me grew from the same branch as her worry for her little brother. I got it. I would’ve reacted the same way.
It was the Apocalypse and trust was one of the most expensive things out there.
But still, the explanation in my mind of her motives didn't make her glares sting any less. I still had the strange feeling that I was in a room filled with dozens of predators instead of just Clyde and his big sister.
After much debate, Clyde and Addeline duct taped cotton balls to my ear, along with what was left of my ear lobe. Clyde had the genius idea to poke a hole in the tape with a pen, “so that I could hear”. I was pretty sure all that did was get ink inside my ear, but I didn't say anything. It was a good way to pass time for him, I guess.
It worked for me, at least for a short time. With Clyde sitting right next to me checking my ear and relentlessly apologizing for “his mistake” because it was “his fault” because “he's the one who threw me into that hallway without looking first”. And, most importantly, because I “almost died”.
Personally, I think he was putting way too much on his shoulders. Like I’d “almost died” so many times, I couldn’t even begin to start a count. It was the Apocalypse. There were zombies everywhere and it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.
While this was going on, Addeline was silently arranging and rearranging her backpack, trying to fit the most of what was going to be useful into it.
The three of us should’ve been talking about a plan, or anything, but there was only silence. Addeline didn't offer up any information about her apocalypse experience, but I guessed she didn't feel like reliving the experience by telling me, a stranger. Come to think of it, I didn’t know anything about what’d happened to Clyde, either. Not that we’d had much time to chat, but he'd never said why he left home, though I think I had a pretty good idea from all of that guilt-filled eavesdropping I did. I didn't know anything about this guy for sure, at least not anything from the Before.