Uncle Jamie didn’t say a word until we reached the driveway of the next farm over. The Jenson’s hadn’t farmed their land in a few years. They’d been looking to sell, but they’d had a large family. If they’d done like grandma had and gathered their family, Uncle Jamie wasn’t going to be welcome at the house.
To his surprise, no one was at the main house or any of the barns. The Jensen’s, for whatever reason, had decided to wait out the zombie-apocalypse somewhere else.
“We can’t stay here long,” Uncle Jamie said, “but it’ll do us for a few days.”
No one argued, complained, or said a word. We knew, whether we wanted to admit it or not, that from then on out or, at least until the zombie apocalypse was over, that we were nomads.
During supper that night, Chase tried to explain—tried to apologize, but Uncle Jamie wouldn’t hear any of it.
I could see the resignation in the older man’s eyes. We’d attempted and failed miserably at riding out the end of the world. With people like cousin Jace or my mom, for that matter, in our family, there was no way we’d have been able to no matter how hard we tried. Mom wasn’t a terrible person or anything, but she hadn’t been prepared for the life in which we found ourselves. Few people were. And no one, not even the most diehard zombie fans, had ever truly believed that we’d see an actual outbreak.
Even those who planned for the apocalypse, who stockpiled weapons and food, couldn’t be mentally prepared for what happened. You can train all day every day, but until one of those things comes running at you, you never know how you’ll react. Even worse was having one of those creatures be someone you knew, someone you loved, someone you’d given birth to, or someone who knew you more intimately than anyone else on the planet. Having to kill that person, even though logically you knew they weren’t a person anymore, does something to you. It breaks you apart in ways you could never imagine.
Once you start breaking, sometimes you can’t stop until you are nothing but dust.
We’d keep moving, keep looking for a safer place. Until the last of those creatures was dead, nowhere was safe, nowhere was permanent, and nowhere would be home.
16.
We stayed at the Jenson’s farmhouse for about a week before moving on to our next destination. We might have stayed longer had the couple had a cellar full of food storages, but Mrs. Jenson wasn’t a canner like Grandma, nor did she buy in bulk like Uncle Jamie’s wife.
My uncles had moved quickly in those first few hours after the news of the outbreak aired. They hadn’t stopped to wonder if the stories were true, as I had, nor had they gone into a catatonic state like my mother. The second the first story aired, they were packing.
The two men weren’t preppers or those people who were waiting for the end of the world, but they were planners. Throughout their life, the two had made plans for all kinds of different disaster scenarios: earthquake, tornado, and war, to name a few. My mom had laughed at them when she heard them talking. I’d been thankful for their preparedness on that first day and every day since. Yeah, most of us still died, but we’d lived longer than plenty of other people, and only a few of us had turned into one of those creatures.
The Jenson’s had very little in the way of food and other necessities at their house, suggesting they hadn’t been home when it all went down, which wasn’t a surprise, considering Grandma thought they might be looking for a place out west to be near their kids.
On the day we left the Jenson’s house, we’d loaded ourselves down with as much of their stuff as was reasonable to carry before departing. Our packs couldn’t be too heavy in case we had to make a run for it, though Uncle Jamie said that if that type of situation came up that we should drop our packs then run. We could always attempt to retrieve the items later if we lived through whatever danger in which we found ourselves.
Between the Jenson’s home and our next stop, which we hoped would be Uncle Carson’s house, one of the creatures got Kayla. We were on the outskirts of a small residential area and hadn’t heard the pack of seven zombies until we came around a corner to see them pacing in front of a house. We damn near ran right into them.
I turned to run, as did Chase, but Kayla froze, and Uncle Jamie and Sam braced themselves for a fight. I don’t know why the two decided to go up against the creatures at that moment unless it was because they had instinctively known that the small horde had someone or a group of someone’s pinned in the house. The two men had been correct, though I was never sure why the people hadn’t escaped out the back door. I was sure we hadn’t seen any zombies back there when we’d passed by the yard. Something else must’ve been going on inside the house, but we never found out what.
“Shit,” I said when I realized that Uncle Jamie and Sam weren’t following us.
“What?” Chase asked, coming to a stop beside me.
My words had halted our running, and we were both bent over panting and not paying attention to our surroundings.
“We have to go back,” I said, nodding toward the fight behind us.
“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head.
I could see the terror in his eyes. I felt it coursing through my body, but that didn’t change what we had to do. Or what I had to do at least. His brother was back there, our cousin and our uncle. We couldn’t just leave them. Ever since the fire, we’d noticed that the fight had gone out of Chase. The only reason he was still with us was because of Sam.
“Then find someplace to hide, but I’m going to help,” I replied, dropping my pack and heading back to where my uncle and cousin were fending off the dead.
“Don’t just stand there,” I said as I passed Kayla, who still stood frozen in the middle of the road.
I had my machete out and was seconds from swinging it at the nearest zombie’s head.
Kayla didn’t move.
Realizing that we’d distracted the zombies in front of their hideout, a group of six people exited the house once the front porch was empty. Two men and a woman attacked the creatures from behind while a third man hurried away with two children in tow.
The six of us made quick work of the undead, and we thought we’d done so without casualties, but a few of those creatures had taken down one of the men in the other group, and one of them had bitten Kayla. She’d managed to knife the zombie that had attacked her before coming to her senses enough to run away, though by then it was too late.
The other man and woman went after their companion and the children without even thanking us, asking if we were all right, or checking on their fallen friend. Uncle Jamie put a bullet in the dying man’s head to end his suffering.
The second we found the two of them hiding in a rundown gas station, Kayla tried to cover her bite, but Chase told Jamie. Chase had called Kayla to him when he saw her running his way. Now, he was cowering in a corner away from her.
“Everyone okay?” Uncle Jamie asked, leaning against a wall to catch his breath.
“Yes,” Kayla said, not looking at us.
“No,” Chase said, pushing himself further into the wall.
“Are you hurt, Chase?” Uncle Jamie asked, straightening but not brandishing his weapon.
Sam rushed to his brother to inspect him for bite wounds.
“No. Kayla is. She was bitten.”
Chase was shaking his head furiously and pointing at our cousin while Sam patted him down.
“That true, Kayla?” Uncle Jamie asked, stepping toward her with his hands up to show that he wasn’t going to hurt her. At least, not yet.
“Ye...Yes,” she stammered, rolling up the sleeve of her shirt to show us her mangled arm.
“Okay,” Uncle Jamie said.
“Shit,” Sam said.
“No,” I nearly screamed.
Uncle Jamie put up his hands to quiet all of us.
“Kayla, honey,” my uncle said in a false calming voice. “You know your choices. Stay with us, and I’ll kill you the instant you start to turn, or you can run.”
“I ki
lled it the second it sank its teeth into me. I won’t turn. We can just bandage my arm. I’ll be all right,” Kayla argued.
“You know that isn’t how it works. Everyone turns no matter how insignificant the bite. Your wound is massive.”
“That’s because flesh came away when I pried its mouth off me. I killed it before it could transfer the virus.”
Kayla was frantically wrapping her arm in whatever she could reach as she spoke.
“You can’t know that,” Uncle Jamie said.
“You can’t know if I’m wrong,” Kayla countered.
“Fine. We’ll find a place to stay for the night. You’ll be tied up until we’re sure you won’t change. That work for everyone?” he asked.
We nodded, though I could tell that my cousins were just as leery about having her around as I was. We didn’t have to worry for long. Before we could take two steps toward the door, Kayla dropped to her knees and began vomiting.
Uncle Jamie stepped to her with his gun raised. When Kayla looked up at him with nearly opaque eyes, he shot her. I threw up that time. He turned to me with his gun still up.
“I’m not infected,” I said, wiping my mouth.
He grabbed my face and looked into my eyes. Once he was satisfied, he nodded and motioned for us to exit the store.
“Are we just going to leave her there?” Chase asked.
“We don’t have a choice. Between the battle with that horde and my gunshot, we’ve drawn too much attention to ourselves. We need to find a place to lay low for a few days,” Uncle Jamie said. “Y’all’s place isn’t much further. We should try to get there before nightfall.
The three of us followed him out of the store and into an empty street. I hated leaving my cousin behind, but I understood my uncle’s point.
17.
“How much further to our house,” Chase asked, sounding as tired as the rest of us felt.
“Probably another half an hours’ walk,” Uncle Jamie said, not looking back at his nephew.
“Thank God, I don’t know if I can walk much longer,” Chase said.
“You’ve got this, little brother,” Sam said, coming up to clap his brother on the shoulder.
“Don’t call me your little brother. I’m not a kid,” Chase said, shaking off his brother’s hand.
Sam laughed.
I had a feeling that Sam was purposely goading his brother to take his mind off his exhaustion. I was grateful for it. Their banter distracted me, as well.
Uncle Jamie was sure that he and his brother had picked Uncle Carson’s home clean, but the place had a finished basement. I couldn’t wait to crawl into the fold-out sofa and sleep for a week.
I hadn’t stayed the night at Uncle Carson’s that much since he didn’t have any girls. When I had, I’d slept on the pullout in the basement. The mattress hadn’t been comfortable, I remember. Right then, though, it would be better than the hard-ass ground.
“If the basement is in-tact, we could stay there a while,” I told Uncle Jamie. “It doesn’t have an outside door or any windows. It could be a perfect place for us to hide. Like Grandma’s cellar.”
“We aren’t staying long. It isn’t safe. It’s too close to town,” Uncle Jamie replied before spearing a zombie in the head.
I didn’t have time to argue as three more came from behind a fence.
Despite wanting to settle down somewhere for longer than a week, I could see his point. The closer we got to the city, as Grandma called it, the more dead bodies we saw and zombies we had to fight. Still, I was tired, and my head was spinning from what he’d had to do to Kaylie. The end of the world was starting to wear on my sanity.
After we’d fought off our second small horde a block or so from Uncle Carson’s house, Uncle Jamie reminded us again that no matter how safe we thought Uncle Carson’s house was, we wouldn’t stay there for long. We would spend a week maybe two so that he could search the town for supplies and food, and to see if he could get an idea of what the government and military were doing about the outbreak before heading back into the countryside in search of a better place to wait out the apocalypse.
Upon seeing the still closed and locked front door of Uncle Carson’s house, we took a breath of relief. All of the other doors and windows were intact as well.
“No one has been here since we left,” Sam said, pulling a key from his pocket and unlocking the door.
“It doesn’t look like it, no,” Uncle Jamie said.
The second the door opened, Chase rushed inside and up to his room. Uncle Jamie called for him to wait, to stay with us, to let us make sure the place was safe before he went off on his own, but Chase ignored him.
As soon as we knew that the downstairs was zombie-free, Sam split from my Uncle and me to go to his room as well. We couldn’t blame them. I bet neither boy thought they would ever see their home again. They’d packed a fair bit of things and carried them with them to Grandma’s house, but there were still clothes in their closets and favorite memorabilia that they’d left behind. For a brief second, I almost asked Uncle Jamie if we could go to my house next, but I knew doing so would be pointless.
Once we decided that the house was secure, Uncle Jamie ordered my cousins to join us in the living room.
“Boys, I know this is your house, and you feel safe here. However, I think we should stay down in the basement until we leave. We need to confine ourselves to one place, and with only one door, it’ll be easier to defend. You can take an hour to bring all of the things you want to the basement. After that, you don’t leave, none of you,” he said, turning to look at me then back to my cousins.
“Get all the clothes you need, anything that looks like a weapon, and any other supplies your dad and I might have left behind, and take it to the basement. Willa,” he said, getting my attention again, “you raid your aunt’s closet. You’ll need some extra clothes. And see if she left a pair of tennis shoes. Yours look a bit worn. When we leave here, I have a feeling that we’ll be doing a lot of walking.”
I nodded and followed Sam and Chase upstairs. Their mom was taller than me. She was also a size or two broader in the waist and chest than me, but I was able to make two pairs of jeans, four shirts, two pairs of shoes, all of the socks, and a few other odds and ends work for me. She and Uncle Carson also left behind a large backpack that I shoved the items into and carried them downstairs. The boys came along shortly after.
Once we were in the basement, Uncle Jamie handed out a supper, consisting of a spoon full of peanut butter and a spoonful of jelly with a few Fig Newtons, and a bottle of water.
We ate in silence.
We cleaned up for the night in silence.
We took shifts throughout the night in silence.
My cousins’ excitement at seeing their house again had worn off, and the two boys were sad. Chase even cried some. Both boys wanted their parents.
I could understand the feeling. Even though my mother could make me crazy, she was my mom, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl up next to her and sleep for a year. I couldn’t bear to think about my dad.
The next morning, after a breakfast of canned peaches and more bottled water, Sam asked, “What should we do to fortify the house?”
“Nothing really,” Uncle Jamie replied. “We’ll make sure all of the doors and windows upstairs are locked tight, and we’ll continue to keep watch at the top of the stairs. We won’t be here long enough to need more than that.”
“I know you’ve said that, but I think we should reconsider. This basement isn’t as big as Grandma’s, but it’s plenty big enough for us.”
“We aren’t staying here. I’m not telling you three again. We’re too close to the city for us to stay here for too long. If the zombies don’t overrun us, then looters will,” Uncle Jamie repeated, taking up a guard post at the top of the stairs.
Chase opened his mouth to say something, but Sam put a hand on his arm to quiet him.
“But this place is perfect,” Chase said in a low vo
ice to his brother. “And you and I have a legal claim to it if anyone tries to force us out.”
“None of the old laws matter anymore,” Sam said. “I think we could be safe here, but Uncle Jamie has a point.”
Sam’s words shocked me. He’d been on Uncle Jamie’s side every step of the way from day one.
“We’re only here long enough to regroup. Don’t get too comfortable,” Uncle Jamie said, from the top of the stairs.
I doubted he’d been able to hear the boys, but it was apparent what they were discussing. The three of us dispersed. I don’t know what the boys did. I went to the pullout to nap before my turn at watch.
Sam, Chase, and I tried not to make ourselves at home in the days that followed, but the feat was near impossible for the boys, considering we were in their home. After a day or so, I started settling in also. Uncle Jamie never did, though he did eventually go through his brother’s things for more clothes.
18.
By the end of our first week in Uncle Carson’s basement, my cousins and I had made up our minds that the house was safe, and we would find a way to convince Uncle Jamie to remain there. We’d brought down all the furniture, board games, clothes, and other useful and nonessential items that we could. We’d submitted to his hours of training each day and took our shifts on guard. However, when we could, we pretended life wasn’t falling apart.
Uncle Jamie tried to dissuade us from letting ourselves become complacent, but his attempt was only half-hearted. He was losing strength, and we knew it. And we took advantage of it.
Considering all that we’d been through, we should’ve understood what he was feeling, should’ve helped him more, should’ve listened to his protests. It’s incredible how quickly we became comfortable, though. We let our guard down. We forgot the type of world in which we lived. Or maybe we wanted to ignore it and pretend everything was normal.
“I’m going into town,” Uncle Jamie announced on our last day in Uncle Carson’s house.
WILLA Page 8
