“How is this OK, Christine?” he screamed, his voice breaking in the middle as he gave a hysterical, quick laugh. “I killed him! I killed Mitchell!”
Christine’s hands fall back to her side. There was nothing she could do to stop his rising hysterics.
“He was this incredibly smart, amazing kid!” he shouted louder. “He helped Zack bring business to his store by designing fliers in his graphics class. He was one of the only people who consistently showed up for game nights. He drove me to work once when my car wouldn’t start.”
Liam bent over and rested his hands on his knees as the memories of Mitchell washed over him. His face was level with his dead friend’s. He stole quick glances into his lifeless eyes. Deep heavy breaths were the only thing that kept him from throwing up where he stood. Tears fell from his eyes and streamed down his face in waterfalls.
“He was so…young…” he said softly.
Christine could do nothing, but watch as Liam descended. Should she comfort him? Should she give him his space to process? Picking the wrong one could set him off, and possibly send him from the apartment again in a blind rage. People did stupid things when they were upset, when they were scared. She couldn’t let him leave, even though the apartment was the last place either of them wanted to be.
She took a few steps toward her sobbing fiancé and placed a hand gently on his back. He flinched. With caution, she placed another hand on his back and closed the gap between them to rest her head against him. There was nothing she could say to make it any better. He’d not only killed two people, people who minutes ago had been the only other two left on the Earth as far as they knew, but he’d killed a good friend.
“They were trying to…why would Mitchell…?” Words failed him.
“The other guy made him,” Christine quickly said before the memory of Mitchell could be tarnished. “He threatened to shoot him if he didn’t hold me down.” She spoke with detachment, like she hadn’t been the one helpless on the ground moments ago.
Liam took a few ragged breaths. He wiped his mouth with the hand he held there and then let it fall to his side. He reached down and closed Mitchell’s eyes with two of his fingers. “Rest in peace, mate,” he whispered before turning to Christine. “We’ll wait for Zack to get back before we remove the bodies.”
The thought made Christine want to run from the apartment and never return. Too much had happened there for it to ever feel like home again. Maybe Liam wasn’t the one who was a flight risk. She nodded her head as she tucked her bottom lip in to bite it so she wouldn’t cry again. She needed to be strong for Liam.
VIII.
The weather-beaten couple sat out on the patio together as they waited for Zack to return from his search. Their last bottle of wine sat on the floor between the two chairs. Every few minutes Liam reached down and poured more into his mouth before he offered it to Christine.
She declined with a wave of her hand. One of them had to be alert and she was certain it wasn’t going to be him. To break the heavy silence, she pressed down and held the button on the black walkie-talkie in her lap.
The desire to bitterly ask Jerry if he was awake after all the screaming burned through her, but civility won. She was too emotionally exhausted to be bitter with anyone. “Jerry, are you there?”
She waited for the familiar beep, but there was only silence. Just as she was about to get up and lean over the railing to see if she could spot his feet, a gruff voice patched through.
“Yup,” he said, drawn out and lazy.
“Just checking in.”
“Yup.”
“Yup,” she said mockingly as she set the radio down on the ground with an annoyed sigh.
She hoped that the awkward interaction might’ve sparked a small chuckle from Liam, but when she looked over he was staring out into the night with a vacant, solid face.
She couldn’t stand to see him that way. It was so unlike Liam, but she understood. If she had killed someone, for any reason, she’d be a wreck too, even more than she already was from witnessing it. She would have cried hysterically and broke everything he could get her hands on in the apartment.
Liam was keeping it together well in comparison, even if it scared her to death. She turned to look out at the parking lot. Her back stiffened when she saw something move across the empty spaces in front of their building.
“He’s never going to find her,” Liam said as he looked out unblinkingly at the figure walking slowly across the lot. “She’s probably dead. He’s going to die, too, if he doesn’t quit chasing after a bloody ghost.”
The old Liam would’ve had hope. He used to believe that love conquered everything. He didn’t believe in anything anymore.
The figure stepped out from the shadow of a large red maple tree, allowing Christine to just barely make out Zack’s rugged features. He disappeared beneath her into the open hallway below. She heard the pounding of his heavy boots on the stairs as he climbed to the second floor. Her stomach dropped from déjà vu. She reassured herself it was definitely Zack who she saw, but her mind played tricks on her.
Another figure emerged from the trees that lined the spaces in the lot. It moved sluggishly, dragging one of its feet behind it as it shuffled after Zack. They heard the familiar low moan and blood-coated gurgles as it moved relentlessly forward. Black liquid poured from the stumps where its hands used to be.
“Do you think Zack did that? Christine asked, but Liam didn’t answer. “Why wouldn’t he just kill it?”
She stood up to grab Liam’s bow and quiver from inside the patio door. It would be her first moving target practice. Again her stomach plummeted before rocketing back up, this time from excitement. But before her hand could turn the knob to go inside and retrieve her weapon, a single shot boomed from below and the zombie crumpled to the pavement with a sickening, moist thud.
“Shoot,” Christine sighed as she sat back down. “I really wanted try to get it.”
The corners of Liam’s lips pulled upward ever so slightly as he looked over at Christine.
She blinked a few times and then smiled dolefully. “Happy Halloween.”
Liam stood up and went back inside. Christine hadn’t given up. She needed to learn how to defend herself, especially after what happened with Mitchell and that scumbag. He wasn’t always going to be around to save her. If he’d been even a few minutes later that evening, who knew what they would’ve done to her. His fists involuntarily clenched as his heartbeat thumped in his ears.
He stood up and went back inside and didn’t stop until he was out the front door.
Christine remained in her seat and looked up at the stars as she wrapped her arms around herself, snuggling deeper into Liam’s oversized, knitted hoodie. The air was still, but cold. The thermometer read forty-two degrees. She threw her head back and downed what was left of the dry white wine.
She called out to Jerry, the walkie-talkie on the floor next to her foot. “I’d invite you up, Jer, but we’re fresh out of booze.” Just like every other time she’d tried to reach out to him, there was no answer. “Yup, happy Halloween.”
She trudged back inside and double checked all the deadbolts to make sure they were locked.
Part Five
“If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life…Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long.”
—Wendell Berry,
The Unsettling of America
I.
Billowy flakes of snow fell from the sky and landed on the tip of Anita’s nose. She stuck her tongue out and waited for the ice crystals to fall into her mouth as she spun around in circles. Her bare feet numb to the freezing, hard ground.
When she was a kid she used to curse the sky because the snow came later each winter. One year it didn’t show its face until late on Christmas Eve night and she almost went to bed in tears. But with people forced from the comfort of their heated homes to live out in the woods like animals, the snow decided to arrive early, on the first day of December.
Once Anita had collected enough snowflakes to wet the inside of her mouth, she moved on to walk the snow covered trails of the Dunes. She skipped and kicked the snow up with her icicle toes.
“Oo, look!” she stopped and exclaimed. “I knew we’d find one soon!”
She ran over to a body lying several dozen feet away on the ground. It was blanketed with a fresh coat of powdery white. She dropped to her knees beside the frozen corpse. Its skin was a dark grayish, black. Its eyes were still and completely glazed over white. She could only see the slightest hint of a pupil left when she moved her face in closer. Its torso had been slashed deeply and was only connected to its lower half by a few threads of skin and muscle at the back. Its jaw was frozen shut, but the muscles still worked to snap its teeth.
“It’s OK,” she said sweetly, as if talking to an old friend. “I just want your shoes. Is that all right?” She smiled down at the mangled, bloodied face as it craned its neck toward her. With a strained growl, its head fell back down the measly inch to hard ground. “Thanks, pally!”
She brushed the snow away from its feet to reveal large, brown leather work boots. She slipped them off as the weak muscles in its ravaged legs attempted to kick. Once she got them off, she turned the boots upside down and gave them each a good shake to see if anything would fall out, like a tow or a loose piece of skin. Luckily, there was nothing and that put a smile on Anita’s face. The butt of her loose baggy jeans, which she’d found off another dead body, grew wet as she sat on the ground to put on the boots. Her feet slid right in since the steel-toes were at least three sizes too big.
“It’ll have to do for now,” she said as she stood up. Her toe plenty of room to wiggle. They could have been clown shoes on her.
She tried to lift one foot up off the ground, but the boot fell to the ground, leaving her foot cold and exposed. Scraping her feet along the ground so she wouldn’t lose one again was a better idea. It wouldn’t be ideal for when she needed to run or climb, but she’d find a good place to hide them when those moment snuck up on her. For now, she was glad her feet had somewhere warm to thaw.
She waved goodbye to the moaning frozen body on the ground. “See ya around!”
Wandering aimlessly around the woods gave Anita countless hours to think about the last time she had someone real to talk to. She pretended it was her dad and the exchange had been filled with loving last words, but in the back of her mind, buried deep down, she knew the last time she’d spoken to another human being was the night she was beaten up for her shoes. That was five months ago. She shook her head violently to clear their leering faces from her head.
“Of course, I still have you, dad, so they don’t even count. It didn’t even happen, really. And it won’t happen again…I mean, ever.” She giggled to herself like a child caught in a silly lie before she let out a sigh and looked up at the gray sky. “You always loved this time of year. I can’t even count how many times you dragged me out to the woods at the crack of dawn to hunt.”
The echo of a twig snapping sliced her reminiscent thoughts in two. “Shh!” she shushed herself sharply as she looked over her shoulder. Every time she did this, she expected to see her dad standing there, but he never was.
She crept forward as quietly as she could with her new boots dragging along the ground. The snow made a crunching sound with each swipe of her feet. A large doe nudged the ground with its nose in front of her. Slowly, she took off the boots and leaned them against the tree she was crouched behind. “So cute,” she whispered. “Look at its fluffy little brown and white tail, like a bunny.”
She tread lightly as she neared closer. The peaceful creature didn’t seem to notice her as it continued to forage for something to eat. Before long, Anita was able to reach her hand out to pet it. The fur tickled the tips of her fingers.
Her knife plunged deep into the doe’s neck. The animal let out a high cry as it hopped and kicked, its vibrant blood splattering the white snow. Anita charged the doe again with her knife raised above her head. With an angry cry she thrust it down to the hilt into the deer’s chest over and over again. A geyser of blood sprayed splashed face and clothes. The grunts and moans of the dying animal faded until it lie motionless in Anita’s arms, its head cradled like an infant. She looked down at its black, marble eyes as blood ran down her face.
Quickly, she dropped the head and moved to the doe’s hindquarters to start cutting away the meat from the bones, the ruffled fur still attached. Once her arms were stocked full of blood-soaked meat she ran back to her boots, jumped into them with ease, and shuffled away.
It wouldn’t be long before the dead came, the agonizing sounds of the dying doe beckoning them from their path. There was always the alternative, too. One that made Anita’s skin crawl with goosebumps—living people would come. She wasn’t going to take that chance again. When she looked over her shoulder she saw bodies moving slowly through the trees headed for the downed deer.
She didn’t stop again until she found a heavily wooded area with fresh snow absent of track marks of any kind. She tossed the deer meat into a pile and searched nearby for wood to make a fire. Her heart raced and her lips parted into a toothy grin as she envisioned the feast she would have that afternoon. She couldn’t wait to sink her teeth into the fresh kill.
II.
The group of wanderers was finally able to catch a break in the densest part of the woods, well off the beaten trail. The dead didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the plummeting temperatures, which were well below freezing. It did, however, slow the group down. They sat in a tight-knit circle around a roaring fire for warmth. With Lonnie not there to tell them what to do, they made the fire as big as they could. There was no longer any worry of anyone else seeing the smoke through the trees.
“We can’t keep going like this,” Gretchen said through chattering teeth. “We don’t have the winter wear to survive out here. We need shelter now. And not just these random building we find in the park that we can stay in for about a week before they’re unsafe again. A real home.”
Rowan stared into the crackling fire as the flames danced in his unblinking eyes. When Lonnie got back with Mitchell, he was going to take over again and then Rowan wouldn’t have to worry about keeping everyone safe anymore. The weight would lift from his sagging shoulders and he could return to a life of following blindly, no questions asked. He longed for those days.
Even though it’d been a month since Lonnie and Mitchell disappeared into the darkness of the woods, never to be seen again, Rowan still had hope. He wasn’t going to give up on his dream of being unburdened. Gretchen’s sharp voice drifted in his closed off ears and woke him up from his miserable stupor.
“Hello in there? Are you listening?”
He moved his eyes slowly to gaze at her from across the fire.
“We need to find somewhere to stay. These things are getting closer every day. It’s not safe out here in the open like this. If we don’t get eaten alive, we’ll die of hypothermia.”
Rowan sucked on his teeth as he thought about the hardships the group had faced in the last few weeks with Lonnie gone. There was the realization that they were down two men when the number of dead roaming the Earth seemed to have doubled. And the fact that all the people left in the group, besides him, were virtually useless. Not to mention, he wasn’t a leader. Sure, he looked the part, but when it came down to it, he didn’t have the balls. None of them did.
The girls were more than Rowan could take. Carolyn was a babbling bimbo who hadn’t once touched a weapon in all the time Rowan knew her. Gale still complained every step of the way about her feet, her back, the cold, her clothes, her shoes, the clouds, anything she could think of. Gretchen’s sole purpose in life was to butt heads with whoever was in charge without offering up any solutions of her own.
Sadly, his two accompanying men weren’t any better. Dan was still lost in his la-la-land of near suicide, only surfacing to speak to Gretchen in the dim light of night. Rowan wasn’t sure if Dan was coming to grips with what had almost happened to him or if he was planning his next attempt. Either way, he didn’t care. He never liked the guy, not after Lonnie suggested they leave him behind. Plus he smoked like a chimney and it irritated Rowan’s eyes.
Lee was a silent shadow forever behind the group. He held his own when the shit hit the fan, which Rowan should have seen as a blessing, but he hated silence and therefore hated Lee for bringing it upon them.
And then there was Olivia Darling, the new girl, the outsider. She was only seventeen and already tougher than every single one of those sad saps, including Rowan. But there was something off about her. The state of the world didn’t faze her like it did everyone else. She seemed content and that sent a warning off in Rowan’s head. He didn’t trust anyone who smiled when they smashed in a skull, even if it was a zombie’s.
As he sat in contemplation, Rowan narrowed his eyes to glare at Gale as she picked the burnt squirrel meat from between her teeth with her fingernail. A seething burn rose within his chest, filling him with hatred. She was the reason Lonnie never came back. She humiliated him in front of everyone, made him seem weak and pathetic, and that’s why he took off. Wherever he was, Rowan wished he was with him instead of the useless group in front of him.
And why had Lonnie asked that squirmy little Mitchell kid to go with him? Rowan was his number two, his right hand. He imagined them off somewhere with an entirely different and better group, laughing over the ragtag misfits he was left to deal with.
“Excuse me!” Gretchen hissed as she waved her hands in front of Rowan’s face. She was standing up, looking down at him with her hands on her hips.
He blinked a few times and sat up straighter. His back muscles tightened and ached from being hunched over for too long. He let his head loll to the side to look up at the seething woman. “Yes. We’ll find somewhere to stay.” His voice was void of any emotion.
Snow crunched somewhere off in the darkness. Each person around the fire tensed up and snapped their heads to look around like startled gazelle at the watering hole. They couldn’t see anything beyond the small circle of orange glow from the fire. From all sides, sounds of movement met their finely tuned ears. They were surrounded by several clusters of hungry dead coming together.
Rowan’s head spun side to side as the distant moaning grew closer. What would Lonnie do? What would Lonnie do? Everything in Rowan told him to run, climb a tree, get the fuck out of there any way possible and screw the rest of the group. But Lonnie wouldn’t do that.
Lonnie was good. He wanted everyone to survive, not just himself. He did everything in his power to keep those people alive, even though on more than one occasion he told Rowan how much he hated each and every person in the group for one reason or another. Still, he never gave up on them and until Lonnie returned, Rowan wouldn’t give up on them either.
“Shh…” Rowan held a single finger up to his bowed, rosy lips as his eyes widened to look at everyone. They were frozen where they stood, like headstones in a graveyard. “OK,” he whispered to the frightened bunch. “Let’s grab our stuff quietly and—”
He was cut off by a loud, shrieking scream.
Carolyn was on the ground in a matter of milliseconds, a writhing, snapping corpse on top of her. It tugged at her hair as it tried to pull her into its mouth to sink its rotten, blackened teeth into her tender flesh. The only thing that kept Carolyn alive was the way she extended her arms and locked her elbows to keep the hungry monster at bay, its broken teeth just inches from her face. She turned her head to the side, pressing her cheek into snow and dirt, and screamed again.
Rowan and Lee both made their move at the same time. Lee charged the thing that had once been a middle-aged man with thick, black hair and a strong build. He drove his foot into its stomach, sending it flying off Carolyn and rolling several feet.
While Lee kicked, Rowan grabbed his gun from the ground. By the time he spun around with it raised and ready to fire, the thing was swallowed up by the darkness surrounding them and Carolyn was hiding her face in Gretchen’s neck as she cried hysterically.
With the determination of a starved lion, the dead thing lunged back into the circle of light with its mouth open and arms outstretched. One shaky blast from the AR-15 Lonnie left behind and the zombie was lying face down on the ground, its arms raised above its head. One down.
“Let’s get moving!”
Rowan didn’t bother to whisper. He could hear the dead all around them, moaning and stumbling over their own feet as they zeroed in on the spot where Rowan fired the gun.