Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse (7 page)

“Ripley!” Ian said forcefully. At that moment, as her name crossed his lips, her mother’s mouth closed on the fingers that were still inside of it. Ripley screamed and yanked until her hand was released. She stared down at the bleeding stumps of three missing fingers.

• • •

“I should have pulled her hand out.”

At least you used your voice that time. You couldn’t do as much for Grant.

“I could have saved her and let her mother die! And she could have come to live with us and then maybe I never would have let Lena in! Maybe we would have found a better house!”

Watch your volume. You’ll alert the beasties.

“She fucking thought she was going to be fine!”

• • •

“It’s okay. I just n-n-n-need to sto-p-p-p-p the bleeding,” Ripley stuttered, still unable to take her eyes off of the space where her fingers used to be.

Ian backed away. “You know that won’t help.” He moved away slowly because he didn’t want to seem like a complete jerk. The wound, though technically non-fatal if treated quickly, would kill her. If the blood loss didn’t end her life, her infected mother’s saliva would. It was toxic and already mixing with her blood, traveling through her veins. She would die.

She would come back.

Ripley was in shock and Ian used that to his advantage. He knew he had overstayed his welcome. He closed the shipping container’s door and locked her inside as she had her mother. But he couldn’t yet leave. Her screams from inside where attracting a new group of zombies to the foot of the container tower.

“Ian! Please open the door! ”

“You know why I can’t, Ripley! I’m sorry!” He yelled back through the metal door. “I’m sorry.” He listened to her pound on it. Each thwack sent daggers through his heart. Each tearful cry, growing quieter as she weakened, burned his ears.

“My mom. She’s getting-” Her final words.

Ian heard a soft thud as Ripley’s body hit the floor. Blood was seeping out from under the door; too much blood. Her death had come.

He waited for a while longer in the new silence. The dead below began to disperse. Before he climbed down, he heard two sets of dragging feet carrying lifeless bodies around the small and cluttered interior of the shipping container.

• • •

She stayed with her mother in death as she had in life.

“I had a chance to free her.”

There was no way to know what would become of them.

• • •

Tears fell from Ian’s eyes as he walked back to the bungalow. He walked slowly and carelessly, unconcerned if he lived or died. Ian’s reflection in the mirror had changed. He was more mature and defeated at the same time. Grant was still sleeping.

• • •

And Grant never knew.

“No, he didn’t even know that I snuck out that night.”

But you wanted to tell him.

“I wanted to brag, but I couldn’t think of Ripley without seeing blood.”

You still can’t.

“Will I ever?”

Grant didn’t let you brag much. He knew you were a wimp. Tell them about the guns. Maybe if you had had one, you could have saved her.

…I WASN’T TRIGGER HAPPY

It was one thing to shoot guns in video games and have discussions with your best friend about recoil and stopping power, it was a completely different thing to hold a gun in your hand and take a life. Ian had been purposely avoiding it and, through luck alone, a usable weapon hadn’t presented itself.

Now, with the Discount Gun Shop dead ahead and Grant’s eyes already dreaming of the haul that awaited them inside, Ian knew he’d be holding one within the hour.  And when the inevitable happened, he’d have to pretend that it didn’t scare the hell out of him.

• • •

You’re really frightened by a lot of things.

As soon as his brain thinks the word ‘frightened’, it goes crazy with imagery.

“I wouldn’t say a lot,” Ian lies.

You can’t fool me. I see what you see. Long-legged spiders, plane crashes, being alone.

“That’s why you’re here. If I keep talking to you, I’ll never be alone.”

Or you’ll
always
be…

• • •

The front door was unlocked. Ian pushed it gently, in case a warning bell triggered or a zombie was just inside. Grant slid through the opening and into the darkness of the shop and Ian followed. They both procured flashlights from their backpacks and shone them on the walls. The pegboards were empty, the display cases too. There wasn’t one single gun in sight.

“Looks like they sold out a long time ago,” Ian said. He tried to hide his relief. There weren’t any boxes of bullets that he could see either.

“Dammit!” Grant yelled. He wanted a gun desperately. It was the only weapon that would make him feel safe. His nose caught a strange scent. “What’s that smell?” he asked.

Ian sniffed the air. “Paint, I think.” He walked slowly behind the counter and into a large storage room. The beam of his flashlight found the source of the smell. “Yeah, it’s paint.”

Grant came to stand beside Ian. “Fucking hell!” he screamed.

A large pile of guns, the store’s entire non-looted selection, was sitting in the middle of the floor covered in pink paint. Emptied paint cans littered the perimeter of the pile.

“Every last one of them is fucking useless!” Grant whined. “We don’t have time to figure out how to clean them.”

Though the smell was strong and the expression on Grant’s face was pitiful, Ian said a silent
thank you
to whoever had damaged the merchandise. “Someone took what they wanted and made sure no one else had the opportunity.”

Grant picked up a handgun from the pile, some of the paint on it was still wet. “Who the fuck would do something like this?” he asked, though he had an idea.

Ian searched the storeroom for the answer and he found it. There, on the door, was a sloppily scrawled set of initials in the same bright pink paint that covered the guns.

“KK,” Ian said. “Keller did this.”

Grant dropped the gun and it sent paint splattering outwards from its landing spot. “And the award for asshole of the century goes to…”

“Well, nothing’s really useful here so maybe we should keep moving.”

“Can’t you at least pretend to be sad?” Grant knew Ian was uneasy around firearms. The first time they’d played a shooting game on his Xbox, Ian flinched every time he pulled the trigger. “One of these days you’ll have no choice but to fight. Whether the weapon in your hand is a gun or not, well, who knows? But you need to get over this shit. We aren’t kids anymore.”

• • •

And yet you still made the other choice.

“I should have dug through the guns with him. I should have found something useful.

There had to have been something, but Grant couldn’t find it through his anger.

“I could have, but I just didn’t want to.”

The girls at the high school might not have messed with you if you had.

“Guns do more bad things than good.”

Like with Markie.

“Yes, like with him.”

…I DIDN’T SAVE MARKIE

Where would you go when the world ends? What places would you avoid? When Grant and Ian saw the Quality Food Center and its parking lot, which had been blocked off by vehicles, it had all the markings of a  great place to ride out the apocalypse: few entrances, plenty of food, and loads of open space surrounding it for nothing to take them by surprise. The only thing that kept them from breaking the perimeter was the four or five men that patrolled it; big, bearded men with guns and attitude. They looked frighteningly organized and ready to kill without warning.

Still, the lure of a safe place kept Ian and Grant lurking on the perimeter.

A teenager climbed out of the encampment, over the bed of a pickup truck and straight toward them in the woods. As he got closer, Ian recognized him as another friend of Grant’s.

“Markie!” Grant whispered.

Ian nodded in acknowledgment. He hadn’t talked to Markie much at school, but the two boys knew of one another.

“Hey, man! Shit!” Markie had a special handshake that he did with all of his friends and he and Grant performed the short collection of slaps, fist bumps, and shakes. “What are you guys doing out here?”

“Scoping out a place to stay. You?”

“Comin’ out to piss.”

Ian looked longingly at the store, of which he could only see the roof. The ring of vehicles was effective in keeping the dead out.

“You’d be safer if you rolled with us,” Markie said. He lifted his shirt to show a gold-plated gun tucked into his waistband.

“We don’t need guns to stay safe from the dead, Markie,” Ian said. The gun made him nervous. Markie with a gun made him even more nervous.

“You might not need protection from them, but Rachel can give you a lot.”

“Who’s Rachel?”

“She’s the baddest bitch you’ve ever seen and if you defy her, well, you die.”

“Why would we want to come inside then?” Ian asked. They’d just been kicked out of a drug store and they needed an easy place to stay, but this didn’t sound like it. It sounded like a repeat of the hell they’d just left. Same troubles, different players.

“You can come in, but only if you plan on staying for a long time. Rachel doesn’t take kindly to folks who just want to pass through. She has some weird ideas.”

“Like what?”

“She likes the chaos, the zombies. She’s happy the world has changed.”

“That
is
weird,” Ian said. He put extra emphasis on his reaction in the hope that Grant wouldn’t drag him inside of the death trap.

Luckily, Grant was already pulling Ian away by his backpack. “I think we’ll pass.”

Markie nodded. “Don’t say I didn’t try to help you out!” He shrugged and ran back to the store.

“Quit tugging on my bag!” Ian ripped free of Grant’s grasp. “What the hell?”

“You’ve heard the rumors. His dad is in a gang. I don’t want to get mixed up in that shit.”

“You don’t have to convince me. I think we should stay solo for awhile.”

• • •

“Funny how Grant led us into the motorcycle gang’s lair, but this was different.”

He knew the guys in the motorcycle club. It was absolutely different.

“They were guilty of just as many crimes and killings.”

You’re on trial here. Not them! Not Grant!

• • •

The boys were preparing to move on, as the day was turning to night, when they saw a woman exit the grocery store.

“That must be Rachel,” Ian said.

“She’s hot,” Grant observed. “Got that resting bitch face though.”

“Who’s that guy?” Ian asked. A man dressed in dark clothing and armed with guns and a blade was sneaking around the outskirts of the parking lot. He watched Rachel and the other men. Ian and Grant watched him take out all of the tires of the vehicle barrier with his knife.

“He’s serious, whoever he is.”

“We should leave.
Now
.”

“Stay quiet. This could benefit us.”

Ian was about to ask how, but then he realized a war between second and third parties might leave them the spoils.

They lay as low as possible as a gunfight broke out and even when the fight moved into the store, the boys held back.

More gunfire and then three people excited the store; Rachel, the armed man, and a tall blonde who looked like a Viking. Then, a grenade went off, taking the Viking with it.

After the explosion, and after the man who’d caused the fight collected the guns and left, the boys approached the store. Small fires burned in the lot, pieces of the larger man’s body hung on everything. Near the door, they came upon a smoldering corpse of a woman. Grant wanted to linger and take in the carnage, but Ian pulled him inside the store.

There, between two of the registers, they found Markie and a man Grant recognized as Markie’s father. A bullet to the brain had killed the older man as he held his son’s body. Markie had bled out from a stab wound and returned to life. His father’s embrace was too tight though, keeping Markie from roaming the aisles. He struggled to break free as a meal hovered over him.

Grant lifted the knife, wiped it on Markie’s pants, and tucked it into his own belt. “Shit,” he said, trying to avoid the biting mouth of his old friend. “His dad always watched over him. He must have been pretty broken up when he died.”

“Should we do something?” Ian asked.

“You mean, kill him?” Grant then saw the golden gun, discarded beneath the register counter. He checked the magazine. “There are a couple bullets left. Do you want to do it?”

Here it was, the opportunity Ian was hoping to avoid. He’d never killed anyone, living or undead. The golden gun, with a light smattering of blood from Markie’s father’s head on its muzzle, was held out to him. He couldn’t take it or a
life
.

“I can’t watch.” He backed away as Grant took no time in aiming at Markie’s forehead.

“A gun with one bullet isn’t much use,” Grant said before dropping it to the floor.

• • •

Is this really a mistake, not saving Markie?

“He wasn’t a bad kid.”

You hardly knew him. I think you should let go of it.

“Maybe you’re right. I’m carrying enough as it is.”

Now we’re making some progress!

• • •

“There isn’t a lot room in my pack,” Grant said as they perused the shelves for foodstuff. It was a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.

“We could swap some stuff out,” Ian suggested. “Get rid of some of the gross things that Thomas gave us.”

“You mean the canned artichokes, don’t you?” Grant knew just what pocket the can of slimy vegetable was in and he fished it out. A can of chili filled its place in the pack.

“What about these crackers?” Ian held up a partially collapsed box of Saltines.

Grant shook his head. “We’re not having a repeat of the communion wafers. They’ll dry out your mouth!”