The Book of a Few (4 page)

Some may say that energy drinks are the lifeblood of the American way. Others may argue that it is coffee, maybe even alcohol. While all these things are good in their own way, nothing empowers you for mass slaughter of the undead quite like an energy drink.

Why, yes. I do amuse myself.

I also decided earlier that I would start writing this log. I’m going to remember everything to the best of my ability and write it down every day. I’ve been sitting here in the cage for probably the past two or more hours working on yesterday’s log. If I don’t write it all down now, I probably won’t ever. I dislike how long it takes to recap all the things that happen in a day. Not to mention that there are fifty other things I could be doing right now, but I just want to do this one simple thing right now.

Anyways, back to this morning. I turned the key in the ignition of my car and eyed the gauges. The tiny red needle stopped just below one-eighth of a tank of gas. I knew I couldn’t make it home on such a small amount. Sighing, I lightly hit my forehead on the steering wheel a couple times, as if it would help my thinking process. Siphoning gas out of other cars came to mind, but I lacked the necessary tubing to do so. After rattling my brain cells for another five minutes, I had this ‘lightbulb’ moment: I had a friend who lived about fifteen minutes away from where I was.

I could go over to Cedar Falls and check up on him. Maybe he had it better off over there. But then I remembered that he lacked anything to defend himself with before all of this. He never did see any need to arm himself. I remember talks with him about how he felt it was odd how Iowans “always gotta have a gun.” Which, all in all, is fine. Different person always means different needs; I was just concerned for his condition. But then I reminded myself that Branden had a wife and kid to take care of. He wouldn’t let them down.

My eyes darted back and forth and around every corner as I reached the residential area where Branden lived. There were no signs of anyone alive or dead. House after house I passed was quiet and seemingly empty. Cars were still parked in driveways with their trunks popped. Suitcases were spilled open and clothes were scattered along lawns. The neighborhood was so quiet.

Honestly, this was the apocalypse I had hoped for at one point in my life—to be completely alone in the world. I’d travel to places and not worry about how much it cost me. But
this
just didn’t feel right. The fear of death and the danger that prowls around every corner adds an invisible layer of thickness to the air that chokes you up and clouds your mind.

Branden was living in a long set of condos that stretched out into green grass adjacent from the street. Because it’s a condominium, he shares his driveway and a parking lot with a dozen other people. I looked intensely into each condo window as I drove past. On the second or third window, I saw a silhouette. A figure stood right in plain view of the window, motionless. I couldn’t make out any details, but as I drove past, the figure seemed to lurch and follow the direction my car was headed. It pressed its face up against the glass, revealing the figure to be a man—or what once was one. His jaw opened and snapped closed repeatedly; a sure sign that he was not in good shape.

I turned my head to look forward and jerked the car to the side with a quick rotation of the steering wheel. There was a body lying in the driveway that I narrowly avoided. By this point, I was already quite certain that the body was not undead; it would have jumped up by now. But I noticed it was a woman and her stomach appeared ballooned from pregnancy. I pulled the car over, now in front of Branden’s condo, and walked back to pay respect to the stranger.

As I walked closer, and the details of the woman became clearer, my heart sunk in my chest. Something about what I was seeing did not sit right with me. Maybe it was that the dead woman was beautiful to me with her flowing brunette hair, dainty hands, and angular jaw. Or maybe it was that, when she died, another smaller life died with her. But I knew what was truly bothering me: her stomach was a fair amount larger than it should have been, even if she was pregnant. And it wasn’t just her stomach that was bloated; it looked as though a second pregnancy had stretched out the woman’s
side
. She smelled horrible, so, I dipped my head and said a word, then walked away.

I walked up the few concrete steps to Branden’s blue-sided condo. I knocked on the door a few times and waited. Even though this is a zombie apocalypse of some sort, there seemed to be so few infected out roaming around. In all the Hollywood movies, the zombie outbreak had always been portrayed as fast-spreading and violent. My pondering ceased when I noticed movement behind the door’s window.

A click came from the door, and it swung open. Branden, half-dazed with squinting eyes like he just woke up, stood on the other side of the entryway. I hadn’t seen him in weeks, and I almost felt like hugging him to say I was glad he was alive. But I’m not really that kind of guy.

I settled with simply saying, “Hey.”

His facial expression gave me the feeling that he was surprised. Surprised because either all that I had to say was ‘hey’ or he was just surprised to see me.

He stuttered a bit as he said to me, “H-hey. Get in here.”

He signaled me in with a near sense of urgency, so I did as he said and stepped in. I noticed as he closed and locked the door behind us that he laid a baseball bat down behind the door. I didn’t even notice he was holding the bat until that point. If this was a different person, with a handgun, I could easily have been robbed or killed. I vowed to be more cautious and aware of my surroundings.

Branden is a little taller than I am and thinner, too. We are both the kind of guys that wear jeans even in summer. But at least I wear t-shirts; Branden wears long-sleeved shirts constantly. He has one of those physical shapes where at first glance you wouldn’t think much of him, but he is probably stronger and in better shape than his appearance indicates.

I stood in his kitchen, watching him lock everything up. When he was done, he caught me off guard when he turned, walked up to me, and wrapped his arms around me. I only did the same as a kind gesture. It wasn’t a long ‘I missed you’ hug, but a short ‘nice to see you’ hug.

I was genuinely quite glad to see him, though. He is a good friend that I have shared plenty of laughs with, but a few things have never clicked between us. I mean, we are a lot alike, but still different in some aspects. The biggest difference probably being our faiths or views on certain
debatable
topics, but it’s not an awkward friendship. We all have our differences, and I am glad I still have a friend who’s alive.

Shortly into our small talk, I noticed an unusual tone in Branden’s voice. Something had happened to him
—
I could feel it. I wondered if it would be all right to ask, but I was also afraid it would end up being too personal for him to divulge to me. Right before he told me, I realized that his family didn’t appear to be home.

“
I’m a bit of a wreck right now,” he said. “Ever since everything went down, it’s been tough, ya know. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here and I don’t know what to do. My, uh, my family’s gone.”

“
Left or…?” I trailed off.

“
Dead.” He sighed and scratched at his scruffy goatee, then cleared his throat weakly before continuing. “I was with her and my son yesterday. Christian had a swimming lesson. I don’t know why they were still going, but they were. So, we went. I figured that it would help the kid get his mind off all the shit, you know?” Branden looked up, breaking eye contact with me. “Some really fucked up shit happened.” He started weeping.

“
Me and Bekah are on one side of the pool just watching Christian down in the pool on the other side. All of a sudden, this man comes rushing from I don’t know where with a gun drawn. Shortly after I see him, on Christian’s side of the pool, another man runs after the first man extremely fast. So the first man shoots the crazy guy, and all the people in and out of the pool are screaming and fleeing. The swim teacher has already disappeared on all the kids in the pool. I turn to Bekah, and this creep has tackled her to the ground. Then I notice blood, so much blood.” Branden bit his lip in a struggle to try to keep his emotions in enough control to continue speaking.

As he was telling me this, I had a mixed reaction. I truly did feel sorry for what had happened to Branden, but at the same time I almost felt unaffected. I kind of wanted to urge him on; I felt like he was wasting my time. I thought to myself how there are plenty of stories like this out there now. I have a story of my own, too. I just want to live and not stand around talking about all that has happened. I want to keep moving forward.

“
This…this man, I’m thinking, was a zombie.” Branden looked at me while he said this so he could gauge my reaction. He wanted to be sure that I didn’t think he was crazy. Regardless of whether or not he got his answer, he continued. “We both know what a zombie looks like, right?” He went on, trying to explain how it wasn’t like a slow, blundering corpse.

I cut him off midway, and simply told him that I had seen some, too.

Branden continued his tale. “Just as I started moving up to grab this guy off of Bekah, I heard another gunshot. I looked around, and saw that it was the man on the other side of the pool again. His gun was pointed at me. Then I noticed that the zombie that was on Bekah had stopped moving. So I pulled the body off her, took my shirt off and pressed it to her neck.”

Branden sighed, then turned his head toward me again and said, “Do you know what it’s like, to have the life of someone you love escaping through your fingers? She was coughing on her own blood, and through my shirt I could feel that flesh had been torn from her neck.”

Branden paused for a moment again, collecting himself. “I look up, and see the man had pulled Christian out of the pool. He carried him into the locker room, so I ran after. Without consciously thinking about it, I already knew that Bekah was dead. When I get in there, I find the man.”

Branden looked to me and I could see anger behind his eyes as he spoke. “Before I get a chance to speak, he’s already swinging at me with the grip of his pistol. He gets a couple good hits on my head and I black out. Then the bastard decides to leave me in a bathroom stall.” Branden stared off into space, blankly. He was so enveloped in his own thoughts that I could have fired off a round of my own and not have startled him.

I can’t remember much else of this conversation other than I told him that we wouldn’t let something like this occur again. Branden chuckled at me, either because he felt there was no way to prevent things like this from happening, or felt that there was nothing worth protecting quite like his son.

I went out to the trunk of my car and brought my 12-gauge inside, along with all the ammo I had for it. When I handed the gun over, his first reaction was mixed. He breathed out slowly, and let out a hum in thought.

“
I don’t know how to use it, really,” Branden said.

“
It’s simple,” I assured him.

First, while he held it, I taught Branden some basic safety because I sure as shit am not going to get hit with a slug. “Only point the gun if you intend to shoot. And watch where your muzzle is. Accidents happen, but if the gun goes off and you didn’t expect it, you fucked up.”

Then I went through most of the parts of the firearm and described to him what each was for. Throughout the entire time I was telling him all this, he was nodding along with it. He seemed to truly understand, even though he had never fired a gun before. I made sure to apologize to Branden; a 12-gauge was a heck of a gun to learn how to shoot with. I warned him to simply hold it tight against his shoulder and to keep his eyes open. He just nodded and smiled.

Branden was nice enough to offer what was left of his food as a way of saying thank you. I didn’t protest against the offer since I just pretty much gave him my shotgun. While we were eating, I let Branden know that I didn’t have enough food. What made it a little harder was that in some ways I now owed Branden a meal. I figured, by myself, I could only squeeze two days’ worth of food out of what I had in my bag. So, we collected minds and sought for a solution to our combined predicament.