“Thanks for that,” Dan Anderson spoke out to the blonde woman who vouched for him. He rested his back against the chair with his legs sprawled out.
Gretchen let herself smile as she took a few steps forward. Her stomach felt warm and her heart beat fast, a result of sticking up for herself and getting Dan admitted into the group. They saved a life. But she’d heard what Lonnie said and she knew he’d hold her to it. Dan was her responsibility now.
“But I don’t want your help,” Dan said as he looked away.
“That’s fine,” Gretchen said in a sturdy voice. She strode over to him and shoved a black bag into his hands. “
You’re
going to help
us
then.”
As if summoned for the duty of testing Dan’s loyalty, an eroded body shambled out from between two of the seasonal shelves twenty feet away. Its jaw hung open in a perpetual moan as bile seeped out from between its black teeth. It locked its clouded red eyes on Dan and Gretchen who stood concealed behind the pharmacy counter.
“Here,” she said as she tossed Dan a compact scout knife from her jeans pocket.
Dan caught it clumsily in his hands and stared down at the small concealed knife that looked more like a child’s toy than a weapon. “You’re not serious?”
Gretchen looked back at him over her shoulder with her hand on the doorknob. “Better get to it. It’s not going to kill itself.” She smiled.
Dan narrowed his eyes and stood up. He flicked his wrist and the knife popped out of hiding, the blade not even as long as his middle finger. He marched out after Gretchen.
She felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck as his footsteps neared. Her breath caught in her chest as his thin figure approached and cast a shadow on her back. She squeezed her eyes shut tight.
Dan Anderson continued past Gretchen toward the lowly zombie circling the pool toys. His feet never slowed as he came up, face to face, with the corpse and plunged the knife deep into its left eye socket, slicing the eyeball in half as it drove into the cerebrum.
The zombie’s mouth still hung wide open as the fight went out of it. It sagged to the tile floor as thick, black blood ran down its decayed, grayish face. There were no last twitches or spasms as life was extinguished. The thing had never been alive to begin with.
Dan’s shoulders rose and sank as he heaved over the unmoving corpse. His hand was drenched in bile and blood. He raised his dark eyes to Gretchen, who stood on the other side of the body in front of him. Her mouth hung open like the dead’s, but her eyes swam with emotions only the living experienced—awe and fear.
XI.
When Liam Scott went of his first supply run with Zack Kran, they were lucky enough to find an abandoned, fully stocked home not too far from the apartment complex, one that Zack and Ralph had previously overlooked, but had been a favorite of Liam’s since he moved in. It was an old Victorian tucked away behind the trees off a backroad behind a corn farm. They came back with a two week supply of food for everyone. He figured he would need that long to train Christine how to survive out there now that she wanted to go along with them.
“Here,” he said, handing her a complicated looking black crossbow, with wires, pullies, and a scope, but unfortunately no rope cocking aid.
Christine took hold of the hunting equipment and immediately almost dropped it as her small hands struggled to get a good grip, especially since she had no idea how to grip it in the first place. “I don’t think this is going to work for me,” she said as the crossbow swayed side to side before she let it fall to the ground completely with a thud.
Liam snorted.
“What?” she barked as she shoved it against the wall. “I’ve never used one of these things before and this one has all this stuff on it that it doesn’t need…”
He smirked with his arms crossed. “Whatever you say, love,” he said upbeat as he handed her his longbow. “You can use this. Now you do remember what I taught you before, correct?”
“You mean the one time you took me to shoot this thing and you were a condescending jerk? Yeah, I remember that.” She cocked her head to the side and tried to keep from smiling, but couldn’t.
“Then you’ll remember this is a longbow so it’s a bit large for you and the muscle required to nock an arrow back may be difficult for someone like…”
Christine glowered at him and pursed her lips, daring him to continue with what he was going to say.
“…someone of your stature,” he recovered with a smile. “But you did all right that day and I’m confident you’ll do even better today.”
He held onto the quiver of arrows as she gripped the sixty-eight inch longbow in one hand. It stood just as tall as she when placed on the cement of the patio. Her arms were already starting to feel flimsy after a few seconds of holding it up, but she’d never admit it. Instead, she would work herself to death before she told Liam she didn’t think she was capable of going out to gather supplies with him. He needed an extra set of hands, to carry and to kill. And she needed out of the apartment, which she hadn’t left in two months.
They stood and faced the brilliant sun over the parking lot. Garbage and debris of those who left in a hurry scattered the hot blacktop. Liam pointed outward to a small line of trees that clustered around the parking spaces directly in front of them. Tied with pieces of twine at different heights in the branches were crudely made round targets.
“Where did you get the wood for those?” Christine asked as she squinted.
Liam looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet. Both his hands gripped the protruding bones of his hips. He smiled and looked up at her through his light orange lashes. “The seats of the bar stools…” he said with a quick wrinkle of his nose. He waited for Christine to huff and sigh as she complained about him ruining the few nice things they had left.
Her lips twitched upward in a brief smile as she nodded her head. She shrugged. “Whatever, it’s fine. Let’s just do this.”
“Right,” he said, relief flooding his face. He stood close behind to correct her stance as she nocked back the first arrow.
It was only two seconds before the desire to release overwhelmed her stringy muscles. The arrow shot forward and took a plundering nosedive straight into the grassy median, nowhere near the trees she’d been aiming for. “These targets are too small,” she said as she let the bow drop to her side.
“If they were twenty feet wide you wouldn’t have been close,” he said with a laugh. She looked at him sharply and he wiped the smile off his face. “Oh, come on. Even you have to admit that wasn’t a commendable shot.”
She rolled her eyes before she lifted the bow again and snatched another arrow from the quiver, jarring it in his hands.
“Just relax,” he said slowly from behind her. “Breathe and hold long as you feel comfortable. Remember, the longer you hold it back the less sturdy your arms will be and the further off you’ll be from your target. That’s it,” he said as she nocked the arrow back and took a deep breath. “Now release the arrow as you exhale.”
He barely finished his sentence before her fingers released. She searched the ground with her hand raised to shade her eyes from the bright white rays of the sun. A steady breeze had finally rolled in and was cooling things down for fall, which she was grateful for, but she was also certain that it was the reason her arrows were landing so far from their targets. It had to be.
“Where is it?” She threw her hands up in the air, one still clutched around the bow’s limb.
“There,” Liam said. He pointed to one of the trees holding a makeshift target. “It’s in the trunk.” He turned to her with wild laughter that pierced the noon sky.
“OK, I get it,” she grit through her teeth. “I’m horrible at this. I shouldn’t even be—”
“No,” he interrupted, grabbing both her shoulders so she’d look at him. “That was brilliant!”
“You’re just saying that because you want to get laid tonight.” She gave a disappointed, crooked smile.
Liam kissed her on the forehead. “That was a really
really
excellent shot. Really!”
She shoved him in the chest and they both laughed. “You think you’re so slick,” she said. “Enough. Let’s go again.”
She looked out at the arrow that protruded from the thin, twisted tree and grinned. Could she be a natural? After all, she’d only used a bow twice in her life. Maybe a day or two of practice would be enough before she went out with the others.
XII.
Later that night, as Christine lie next to Liam, who was naked under the thin white sheet, she stared up at the unmoving ceiling fan. They’d practiced on and off the entire day and she hadn’t hit a single target. The excitement of nailing the tree trunk earlier had left her after her tenth failure to hit anything else. How was she ever going to survive out there? Maybe she shouldn’t go. They’d be better off without her. She would only hold them back.
Her mind wandered as she tried to fall asleep. She looked over at Liam, who was on his back with one arm draped to shield his eyes from the inevitable morning light. His breathing was deep, but soft. She watched his chest rise and fall and felt the pit of her stomach twist into a gut-wrenching knot.
Were they even going to bother getting married with everything that had happened? It seemed a little ridiculous given the state of things. But every girl, even Christine, dreamed of their wedding day. A day that, for her, would probably never come. And what about children? Would Liam ever have anyone to carry on the Scott name? She knew that was something he found extremely important, given what happened to his parents, or at least he did before. Would there ever be someone to continue the tradition of shooting arrows on their birthdays? Her heart ached every time one of her questions went unanswered.
She rolled over onto her side and lay her arm across his bare chest, even though the air was warm and thick in the small, stale bedroom. He stirred and took a deep breath as he lifted his head from his pillow for a second. With a groan, he rolled into her and pulled her body toward him so that her head was buried in his soft skin. She took a deep breath despite the fact that they hadn’t bathe in days. He smelled of stagnant sweat and faded deodorant. She wondered how many more chances she would get to hold him like that before one of them was dead.
XIII.
It took the entire two weeks of nonstop training on the longbow, crossbow, and even a Bowie knife for day before Liam let Christine go out with them for supplies, still not fully onboard with the idea. He paced around the apartment that morning in a frenzy, rifling through boxes but never pulling anything out, tugging at his orange hair and rubbing the back of his neck.
Seeing Liam like that made Christine’s stomach clench until it ached. Sweat had already collected on her forehead. It ran down the side of her face, over her collarbone, and between her small breasts to soak into her bra and shirt. She tried to steady her breathing, but it came out in ragged uneven huffs.
Liam handed her a large, empty backpack and a long Bowie knife. Why had they trained excruciatingly with two separate types of bows if she wasn’t even going to use them? She took the knife and stared at it like some alien object, her nose wrinkled. It got tucked away behind her belt loop with the bottom of her shirt pulled down over it.
“Gimmee one second,” she said as she ran back to the bedroom, threw the closet door open, and stopped in front of the floor length mirror.
She looked herself over one last time. She had on a gray t-shirt, a black zip-up hoodie, tight dark jeans tucked into her lace-up ankle boots, and a scary-looking knife hung from her waist, the tip peeking out from underneath her clothing menacingly. Her stomach muscles finally relaxed. She looked the part of zombie killer extraordinaire and it made her blue eyes light up like the sky.
“I’m ready!” she called, never more honestly spoken in her life.
——
Ralph, Zack, and Jerry waited in the hallway. Jerry still in his sweats, as he was every morning since he hurt his back weeks ago, with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. The morning air had a cool nip to it, which explained the gray hoodie no one had ever seen him wear before. There was a black union symbol on the front above the pocket he had his free hand tucked into.
Ralph leaned on his axe in a dirty pair of Hollister jeans and a forest green, ribbed, long-sleeved shirt. Covering his outgrown dishwater blond hair was a camo fleece beanie with a pair of antlers stitched to the front. He swiftly swung the axe around the back of his head to rest on his shoulders while his hands hung loosely over the handle, as if it were the most normal way to relax and wait for someone.
Zack looked the same as he had every day since the dead started to walk around, armored in padding, his dark, scraggly beard stuck far out from his chin, not quite touching his chest yet. His eyes drooped with deep set bags underneath as he leaned against the wall with his head back. He chimed in on the conversation between Ralph and Jerry whenever his mind was present. He only bothered to lift his head when he heard the familiar click of Liam’s door opening.