“Hey buddy,” I crooned and the dog instantly lay on its back for a tummy rub.
This
was a sweet dog. The only problem was that I had no idea how I was going to feed it. Or myself. Besides being worried sick over Ginny, I was also worried sick over the fact that the van with all of my supplies in it was gone. Right now I had a couple of homemade weapons and some water. That was everything I had in the world right now. I felt that wave of responsibility wash over me again now that I had another living creature to look out for again.
Somehow my tension must have been picked up on by Mojo. He sat up and regarded me solemnly with his amber eyes. “I don’t have any food for you,” I told him. “But I know where water is. What happened to your owner, boy?”
Mojo kept staring at me. But he seemed sad, his head hanging.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to have a breakfast of water. Then I’m going to see if I can find my sister, Ginny.” I suddenly wished I had something with Ginny’s scent on it. Weren’t German shepherds the type of breed that were search and rescues? Maybe somehow I could get Mojo to at least listen or look out for people, in general. With his big ears, long nose and large eyes, he was like a surveillance super-animal.
Mojo leapt to his feet, ran off a yard or two and gave a short, sharp bark as he turned around to stare at me.
He was obviously trying to get me to follow him. His eyes were intent on me, totally focused on getting me to follow him.
“Okay, boy,” I breathed. “I’m coming. Do you know where Ginny is? Do you?” It seemed totally unlikely, unbelievable. But he definitely wanted me to follow him for
something
. And it wasn’t like I couldn’t look for Ginny along the way to wherever we were heading. I picked up my stick and a rock to take with me, although now I felt a lot safer with a big dog on my side. I left the water, hoping we could find our way back to the campsite later. Every once in a while, I took the rock and notched a tree.
We walked for what seemed like forever. Long enough for me to wish that we’d brought water with us. Mojo was surefooted and determined, pacing himself so that I could follow him … sometimes stopping to wait for me to catch up as he led the way. Finally, after we’d been walking for what felt like a few hours, walking through the woods and then looking out on the road for the van, and with no sign of Ginny, Mojo sprinted ahead of me, running to one spot and giving another bark.
Panting a little myself, I hurried up to join him. I felt momentary disappointment that whatever he’d led me to, it clearly wasn’t Ginny. But then I saw what he
had
led me to, and I felt excitement course through me.
It was a duffel bag and a makeshift campsite.
“Is this where your owner was, boy?” I gave a quick look around to make sure that his owner wasn’t anywhere around—especially in zombie form. I wasn’t sure what happened to Mojo’s owner, but I sure didn’t want to tangle with him.
I knelt down and unzipped the duffel. And stared. Whoever Mojo’s owner was, he was organized and smart. Or he used to be, if he was a zombie now. I saw water filters, MREs, camping and hunting supplies, and other things that I needed to survive out here. I put my arms around Mojo and hugged him. His long tail beat the hard, dusty ground in response.
I added some water to two MREs and gave Mojo one. He gobbled it up quickly after making sure that I had something to eat, myself, and didn’t want what I’d given him.
It was amazing how a little food could give you a different perspective on life. “Let’s go, boy. Let’s go find Ginny.” I picked up the duffel bag and slung it over my shoulder. It was very heavy and bulky, so it was a good thing I was as tall as I was. I walked off a little ways, and then turned and whistled to Mojo. He was strangely reluctant to leave. He sat at the spot where the duffel bag had been, staring at me for a minute.
“Come on, Mojo. I can’t stay here and I want to take the stuff with us. We’ll come back later and see if we can find your owner.” Although I wasn’t real sure I wanted to meet up with him at all. Reluctantly, Mojo followed.
The day warmed up quickly with scorching sun. The woods provided some shade for us, but it was still so hot that Mojo and I kept stopping for water. I used the filter from the duffel bag to make the creek water hopefully safer for me to drink. Mojo just lapped it up straight from the source, of course.
I kept looking for Ginny and I felt more and more frantic the longer we walked with no sign of her. She couldn’t have just disappeared. She might have driven a little ways with the van, but she wouldn’t have kept going. At some point, she’d have parked it and probably either stayed put in the van or gone looking for me. I needed to make sure she wasn’t here in the woods before I tried to find her on the road.
As I was coming up a ridge, Mojo started growling and the hair on his back stood up on end. I dropped back down out of sight again. Although I hadn’t seen or heard anything, I knew I trusted Mojo’s senses much more than my own. I waited for a minute and then slowly crept along on my stomach to peer over the crest of the ridge.
It was that zombie family again and a chill went up my spine. Then I realized they weren’t looking in my direction at all. They were aimlessly wandering in the opposite direction, stopping ever so often to listen or sniff the air. Just seeing that little girl in the Disney princess shirt and the little guy in overalls made my flesh crawl. But I was so incredibly relieved that I didn’t see Ginny with them. I’d had this awful worry that Ginny might have been attacked by the zombie family and then become part of their pack. But she was still nowhere to be found.
The frustrating thing was that the zombies were hanging out in the area. I was frozen, waiting for them to move on. Mojo clearly understood the danger and didn’t make a sound, lying silently next to me on the hill. Once I had an overwhelming desire to sneeze, but I somehow managed to resist it.
Finally, after what must have been a couple of hours of total tension for Mojo and me, the zombie family started moving off in a very specific direction. It was weird … almost like they knew there was either food out there or somewhere they needed to be. I was just glad to see them go so that I could finish my painstaking process of maneuvering through the woods and then peeking out at the road.
After a while, the sun set and I realized that I wasn’t going to finish searching today. Especially when I heard the heat of the day firing up thunderstorms. I found a spot under some rocky overhang for Mojo and me to wait out the storm. But all I could think about was how Ginny was so afraid of storms and how worried she had to be.
Mojo was looking pretty worried himself. Before he huddled next to me under the rock, it had been harder to motivate him to follow me. He’d been hanging back and, when I’d turn to call him, he’d look behind him meaningfully.
“Okay. I get it, boy. I told you we’d get back to the campsite. But I can’t make it back there today. It’s already getting dark and I can’t see at night as well as you do. And we don’t need to be walking under trees in a thunderstorm, anyway.”
These last words were accompanied by a quick, illuminating flash of lightning followed immediately by a crack of thunder that told me the storm must be right on top of us.
The rocky spot felt safe but uncomfortable. We were getting wet and muddy and I shivered.
When the sun went down, the storms finally started lifting. I gave Mojo a rub and said, “Let’s set up camp. Just for tonight.”
I pulled out a tarp from the duffel bag and spread it on a flat spot of muddy ground. I could see stars above, so I knew it was clearing, and I decided to pass on using the tent that night. Plus there was the fact that I didn’t much like the idea of being confined to a tent and not being able to see what might be waiting to attack me. I lay on the tarp next to Mojo, who was still staring alertly into the dark, and closed my eyes.
The next time I opened my eyes, it was bright outside. I woke with an alarmed feeling, like I’d overslept or something. I pushed myself to a sitting position and then realized why I must have woken up. Mojo was standing, looking with intense focus deeper into the woods. He seemed to be listening with all of his might.
At least he wasn’t growling. Not yet, anyway.
I could hear rustling sounds of someone walking through the bushes. I kept watching Mojo. He was tense, but his fur was lying down on his back. It didn’t
sound
like the moaning, stumbling zombie family to me. The thought occurred to me that maybe it was Ginny looking for me.
Suddenly, Mojo gave a short bark and then bounded ahead. He wasn’t charging … he was just running.
And then I heard a man’s voice filled with total joy. “Mojo! Smart boy! You found me!”
Mojo ran to me and gave his owner a quick bark.
I saw a man come through the bushes, a frown crinkling his forehead. He was probably in his mid-thirties with dark hair and a wiry, muscular build. Nice looking. His brown eyes flickered a little as he saw his duffel bag and the tarp I’d been lying on. He tilted his head to one side, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Wasn’t enough to steal my supplies, you had to swipe my dog, too?”
I froze and felt the color drain from my face.
The man gave a quick cry and said, “A bad joke. Sorry. It was more like you were looking out for Mojo while I was gone. And I’m glad you could use the stuff.” He reached out his hand and, after pausing a second, I shook it.
“I’m Charlie Black,” he said briskly. I liked that he talked to me like I was a peer of his, instead of talking down to me. “Good to meet you.”
Chapter Eighteen
Charlie
Despite the circumstances, this was turning out to be one of the best days ever. I got my dog back and the stuff that was going to help me survive. And this kid was super-impressive. I never like talking down to kids because I still remember how much I hated it, myself, when I was that age. But it was especially easy to treat Ty like an adult because he was behaving a lot more mature than some of the forty year old guys I knew. And he was only a teenager.
The first thing I wanted to do, though, was to eat. And it was time for the kid to eat, too, since he was just waking up and it was the middle of the day. I decided we’d just tap into the supplies for now, although later on I was going to want to hunt so I didn’t have to deplete the store we had.
We prepared a couple of breakfast MREs and gave Mojo some food, too. The kid was finally starting to look more relaxed.
“So, Ty. What’s your story? Did you take off for the woods like I did, or are you from around here?” For a second, a feeling of discomfort came over me when I realized that maybe he was even the oldest child of that zombie family. I hoped not.
He shook his head and looked down at the pouch of food he was eating. Despite whatever he’d gone through, you could tell he was a kid who cared about his appearance. He had sandy-blond hair that was long on top and flopped over his eyes so I couldn’t see them right now. He had dimples that I’d seen flash exactly once when Mojo had begged for food. He was also very tall and lean. Taller than me, actually, with that slightly awkward bearing of a teen that wasn’t used to his own size yet.
“It was supposed to be just a temporary thing. I’m from Raleigh,” he said. “I’m taking care of my younger sister, Ginny. I pulled her out of her middle school when I heard about the attacks. We got separated when these zombies came up and now I can’t find her.”
I studied him. Like I said, I don’t like talking down to kids, especially teens. But clearly this wasn’t a guy old enough to be looking after a younger sibling on a normal basis. It wasn’t like he was nineteen or twenty or anything. He must have been more like fifteen … maybe sixteen. I decided not to ask about the parents. There was no way there could be a good story there.
“That’s really cool, to be looking after your little sis like that,” I said lightly, instead.
For a second, I thought I saw tears glint in his green eyes before he leaned forward and let the hair flop over them again, hiding. “Yeah, but I didn’t do such a great job. Seeing as how I lost her and everything.”
“Hey, man, you just had to get away from zombies, right? You weren’t going to be any help to her as a zombie, were you? You did the right thing.”
And whatever guilt he must have been wracked with seemed eased in that moment and he looked up briefly to give me a grateful look.
“We were in good shape,” he said, like he was mulling it over. “I’d taken the minivan.”
“Ooh,” I muttered. “Gas guzzler.”
“Yeah, that was the bad part about the van. But we had some gas with us and it was good that we could put the seats down and sleep in the back. It made Ginny feel safer, I think,” he said.
He was still amazing me every second. Here was a teen boy actually thinking about
what his little sister might feel
. I don’t think I wasted a minute at that age thinking about my sister.
“I’d stopped by this country store and loaded up on supplies that I thought we might need. We had food and water and weapons and survival gear. I felt like we were in pretty good shape in the short term,” said Ty, like he was thinking it through.
“So you were breaking up your trip, then? Just taking a break as you were moving through the area?”
I could tell Ty was feeling guilty about everything that had happened. “I was totally exhausted and it was dark. I wasn’t used to driving the car at night, so I was worried about that. We felt a little safer in the van, so I parked on the side of the road as far off as I could. I hoped nobody would notice us. We had a good night’s sleep. I just got out of the van to use the bathroom and ran into zombies in the woods. When I got back to the place where the van had been, Ginny and the van were gone.”
His voice broke a little on the end of the sentence and not because it was changing, either.
I nodded thoughtfully. I felt pretty sure I couldn’t make much of this situation better for Ty. The chances that his sister was even alive were remote. He’d lost his parents … at least, that’s what I was assuming. But I did feel like I could make his guilt better and at least help make a plan for him.