“To some extent, I understand your uncles’ reasoning,” Tanner said, breaking into my thoughts.
He was thinking about my family, as well.
“But if they’d had more people who could’ve stood watch,” Tanner said, “then your cousin might not have gotten into the house, turned, and attacked those people. If that hadn’t happened, then you’d still be safe in the cellar.”
“I guess that’s true, but we’d have run out of resources a lot sooner than we did. Yes, we’d have had the extra people to go on supply runs, though trips into town that early on could have led to assholes or a horde of zombies following the person home and killing us all. I don’t know what would have been better. I think this is an impossible situation, and we all just have to do the best we can and take each day as it comes.”
“You’re probably right. I’ve been alone almost from day one, and I’ve tried my best to stay hidden ever since, so I don’t know what I would’ve done if I were in your shoes.”
“What happened? Where was your family?” I asked, trying not to sound shocked that he’d had no family to help him.
“I lived in a suburb outside of downtown Nashville. When news started to spread about the zombies, my moms were at work in the city. They called to tell me that they were going to pick up as many supplies as they could before coming home. I never saw them again. I can only guess that rioters killed them.
“We didn’t own any guns, so I’m sure they planned on stopping somewhere to get some. That could’ve gotten them killed.
“I had enough food in the house for a week or so, but that was it. They would’ve needed to get food, medical supplies, and things like that. I wanted to join them, but they insisted I stay and take care of our two dogs.
“I gave up on them ever coming back a week later. By then, our house had been broken into twice. Once, the people were after the valuables. Like money was going to be of any use. The second time, they were after food. I’d already moved everything useful up to the attic before the first group got to the house. I’d heard them terrorizing the neighborhood. I’d listened to the screams and cries from people I’d known most of my life and had understood that at any time, I’d be next.
“I carried the food up to the attic first, even some of the refrigerated stuff. Next was stuff like toilet paper and medicine. As I did so, I tried to make it look as if someone had already raided my house, hoping that would be a deterrent, but it wasn’t.
“The first set of robbers killed one of the dogs. I hadn’t forgotten about them, but they’d been too big to keep silent in the attic, so I’d left them in the backyard, in the hopes that they’d stay hidden in their dog houses. Of course, they didn’t. After Katie’s death, that was one of my dogs, I let Dolly, the second one, free. She didn’t hang around the neighborhood long. The zombies don’t seem to acknowledge animals, but she was afraid of them.
“I hated allowing the looters to destroy my home, but I had no way of defending myself, and I couldn’t bear the thought of dying over mac and cheese, crackers, canned soup, and toilet paper.
“I stayed home another week, living off what food we had and what little I found in neighboring houses. At that point, I knew my moms were never coming home. A big part of me wanted to go into Nashville to find them, but the city was too large, and I had no idea where they would have gone, so I headed south. Momma Sarah’s dad lived here in Alabama, so I thought maybe I could find him.”
“You didn’t join any other groups?”
“Not for long. Most of the groups were heading to Florida or up north. I wanted to stay around here. Momma Kat doesn’t have any family. She was an orphan, so if my mothers survived and didn’t find me at home, they’d come south.”
“I’m assuming your grandfather didn’t make it.”
“No, but he lived here, so that’s why I’m staying.”
“Where is here?”
“Florence.”
“Alabama?”
“Yep. You’re welcome to stay with me if you like.”
28.
I looked around at the building in which we resided. The stock room belonged to a grocery store. There were crates of food, water, soap, and medicine. Tanner had moved some of the shelves against the double doors leading into the store in a makeshift barricade. No light showed through the door, so he must’ve covered the windows. The place was a dream despite its lack of lighting.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, nodding at my surroundings.
Tanner had to have been in the store some time to have fortified it the way he had.
“About a week or two. It’s a small grocery store on the outskirts of a middle-class neighborhood. I found it while searching for my grandfather. I brought you here after the horde passed. It’s the first place I found that I’ve been able to get into that’s fully stocked. The bigger stores are empty, full of zombies, or locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
“We could stay here for a year or more, living off this stuff,” I said and hoped he didn’t hear my slip.
“Or at least until some group of assholes tries to kill us for it. That’ll probably come sooner than you think. At first, I thought about making the store my home, but then grew paranoid that if someone saw me coming in and out, they’d know it hadn’t been looted and come for the supplies. I’m sure it’s happened at least once. Someone had already started fortifying the place before I got here. I don’t know what happened to them.”
At the look of uncertainty in my eyes, he said, “I promise it wasn’t me. When I got here, no one was here. No one has come near the place since I arrived. At least not that I know of, but someone will.”
“If you think someone might be out to steal it, then we should probably move this stuff somewhere more secure as soon as possible.”
That time, I said the word “we” on purpose.
“We? Like as in you and me?” Tanner asked.
“Yeah. I mean, if you’re sure you want me around, that is.”
“I do. Do you trust me not to hurt you?”
“You saved my life. If I can’t trust you, then I can’t trust anyone. We don’t have anybody else. As you said, there are a lot of assholes out there. I don’t think either one of us is one of them, at least not yet. We should probably stick together for a while. If you don’t want to, I understand,” I said, backtracking, fearing that I’d made the wrong assumption and that he was going to kick me out as soon as I was well enough to travel on my own.”
“No, I want to. I just thought that you’d want to keep looking for your family,” he said, his face flushing red.
“A part of me does. I know the name of the military base they were heading to, but my gut says they didn’t make it there. If they didn’t, I’ll never find them. They could be dead for all I know. We didn’t have much of a plan. We should’ve had one—a destination nearby that we could meet so that if we separated, we knew where to go, but by that point, we were wandering blind. I think my Uncle Jamie had finally given up or was on the verge of it.”
“Maybe not. Perhaps your uncle didn’t know his surroundings enough to tell you guys where to meet. Or maybe it never occurred to him to need a rendezvous point. Most people I’ve met don’t know where they are, let alone where they’re going, not really. They’re merely picking a direction and moving that way until something shifts their plans. I think that’s about all you can do in this new world. You can hope to find safety for a little while, but nothing’s permanent.”
“If that’s so, then why bother? Why run when the zombies come? Why fight when another human tries to take what we have? Why not roll over and die?”
“Because, for the most part, humans have an instinctual need to live. Even when logically, our minds or maybe it’s our hearts—I don’t know—have given up all hope, our bodies will fight until we have nothing left in us. If we didn’t, our species would have died out a millennia ago. We also can adapt. We are kind of slow at it, but we do learn, we do change, and therefor
e, we survive. What we will be when this is over, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to find out, judging by the way so many are currently behaving, but that too could change.”
“You’ve thought way more about this than I have.”
“I’ve been alone longer than you. I’ve been out in the world. I’ve contemplated my reasons for going on daily. If I’d given up, you’d be dead right now, and if you’d given up, I’d be alone.”
“I don’t get you.”
“What do you mean?”
“One minute, you’re talking about how none of this is permanent and sounding like we should give up, and now you’re all hopeful and saying that it’ll work out because we have each other.”
He laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I guess it does sound contradictory, but I think that’s the point. We, as in those of us living right now in the apocalypse, aren’t safe anywhere and from anyone. We can do our best to help each other to survive, but in the end, most of us, no matter how good of a person we think we are, will look out just for ourselves. If a zombie had been chasing you or if I thought you’d been bit, there’s a good chance I would’ve left you.”
“I don’t think I would’ve blamed you.”
“Yeah, you would’ve. At that moment, you wouldn’t have been thinking about my safety, but your own. Afterward, if you survived or even when in a situation where you were in my shoes, then you would’ve understood.”
“I guess. Why didn’t you think I was infected? I did. That’s why I left my family. We’d run into a horde, and there was a fight. I came out of it with this nasty wound. I don’t know how I got it. It was so gross that I was sure I was infected.”
“I couldn’t see any teeth marks, and the wound looked to be days old. If you’d been bit, you’d have turned way before now. Actually, with something that nasty, you’d have turned almost right away.”
“My Uncle said that he’d heard of people taking days to turn.”
“I’ve heard the same rumor. I haven’t seen anyone take more than a few hours. With the days, the person merely had a graze, so I guess only a hint of the saliva-ridden virus was on the zombie’s teeth. I’m not sure.”
“So, I left my family for nothing.” It took everything in me not to scream the words. “Damn it.”
“If you didn’t know, and you thought you could be putting them in danger, then you did the right thing. For all you knew, a zombie could’ve grazed you during the fight, and the wound was a secondary injury. I’m not saying I’m glad you don’t have your family. For that, I am sorry, but at least I know you’re willing to make hard choices. In our world, that’s important. For future reference, though, tell me of any potential bites, and I’ll look you over and lock you up for a time to see if you turn. I’m not keen on being alone anymore.”
“Deal. And thanks.”
“For what?”
“For not making me feel like a complete idiot for running from my family.”
“No problem.”
We sat in silence for a while.
“Do you know how the outbreak started?” I eventually asked.
“Nope. There are so many rumors about that. None of them are even remotely similar. Some are plausible, I guess.”
“There isn’t a cure...is there?”
“Again, rumors, but none that anyone I’ve met believes. A few groups I’ve encountered were heading to some of the military bases up north and out west that are still standing in the hopes that they can provide safety and might be working on something.”
“Shouldn’t we do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, but in nearly every zombie movie I’ve seen and books I’ve read, which, granted isn’t more than about fifty, the first places to go up in flames are medical facilities and military bases.”
“Why?”
“Overcrowding. That makes it too easy for someone who’s infected to go unnoticed, die, and then attack. And too easy for someone to get sick and die without anyone realizing it due to lack of resources, then turn and attack.”
“Does everyone have the virus in us? Do we all turn when we die?”
“That I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone turn into a zombie that wasn’t bitten. I know in some of the mythology that’s how it works, but I don’t know if our zombie-apocalypse works that way. I just know if you are bitten, you turn.”
“Our mythology? You think what’s going on out there could be different from the stories you’ve read?”
“Very much so. All of that was fiction. Granted, some of it the author could have grounded in real science, but it’s mostly fiction and theory. We live in the real world. Our zombies could live, behave, and die, exactly like those writers thought they would, or they could do something completely different. We don’t know.”
“The bullet to the head theory works, right? Is there any other way to kill them?”
“Yep, and not that I know of, but maybe. I haven’t killed many, though. I’m not a hunter. I mostly hide until they go away. Right now, we have the luxury of there still being enough humans around that the zombies are easily distracted. Once we’re nearly extinct, though, dodging them that way won’t be near as easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how I said that I hid in my attic?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing. If I can get into a place that the zombies can’t get to me, eventually, usually within an hour or so, they move on, and that’s because they can smell easier prey nearby. I don’t know from how far away they can sense us, but people have told me it’s pretty far. That’s why they’re moving west. There are more people west of here. The outbreak started here on the east coast. It’s all across the country now, but the theory is that there are more zombies here than there are humans, and vice versa in the Midwest and west coast, so they are migrating.”
“Do you think they’ll all leave here?”
“No, but maybe enough will that we’ll have time to build our defenses and our numbers so that when they return, we can wipe them out.”
“But if they keep making more of their kind, there’ll be too many.”
“For a while, but surely, they’ll die out when they run out of food.”
“Do they do that in the books you’ve read?”
He sat there for a long time before saying, “No. But again, that doesn’t mean they won’t.”
Another lengthy silence followed.
“How long can we stay here before we need to move on?” I asked, breaking the quiet, as I snuggled into the blankets and pillows of the bed he’d made for me.
“A week, maybe two. I’ve been scouting the neighborhood around my granddad’s house. I don’t think anyone alive is still there, and the dead seemed to have moved out of the area. I’ll keep scoping the area while you heal. I think if we pick a few houses throughout the neighborhood to hide supplies and stuff inside, we might be able to stay for a while. That part of town is a bit ritzy, so people passing through the city might scavenge those homes first, but if we pick houses along the shoreline, maybe survivors won’t go that far into the neighborhood. I don’t know.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. Better than anything I’ve come up with.”
“Good. Get some sleep. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
29.
The next day I was asleep when Tanner left. He’d closed the doors in the small grocery store and shut out the lanterns we’d had on the day before to make it look as if the place was empty. Waking in that kind of darkness had been more terrifying for me than being surrounded by a horde of zombies. There hadn’t been even the faintest sliver of light for me to see by when I’d finally opened my eyes.
Momentarily forgetting where I was, I began to hyperventilate. For the better part of a year, zombies had plagued my nightmares. All my barely conscious mind could think was that the room was full of the creatures, waiting f
or me to illuminate my presence.
Eventually, my memories surfaced. Reality flowed back into my awareness. Zombies wouldn’t need the light to find me because I hadn’t had a proper bath in days. The creatures would be able to smell me. If there had been one in the room with me, it would’ve already attacked.
Calming my breathing, I switched my thoughts to trying to figure out where I was and what had happened to me. I could smell. Moving my hands, I reassured myself that I could feel. My disgusting morning breath told me that I could taste. The only thing I couldn’t do was see. I felt as if I’d fallen into a void. The idea that it’d only been a mere second since I’d opened my eyes meant nothing to my brain because while every one of those seconds ticked by, an eternity slipped away, and I was alone in it.
Tears began to roll down the sides of my face and into my ears. I didn’t make a sound, though. I couldn’t bear hearing myself in the void.
What happened?
Had I turned after all?
Where was Tanner?
Why had he left me?
I had to have turned if he’d abandoned me.
I didn’t feel like a monster. I felt like myself, just as I had the night before. I was on the pallet on the floor.
Blankets still covered my body.
The wound on my arm hurt like hell.
Those realizations eased my panic some.
I was still me. I was almost sure of that anyway. I was merely blind—that was all. That was not a good thing to be in a world full of zombies. At least, I was still human.
I’d be a burden to Tanner, though. Even more so than I was at present. I’d need to leave him before I got him killed.
Leave how? I questioned my inner voice. I don’t even know where Tanner’s exit is. I saw no way out last night when I could see the room. How am I going to find it now?
I shifted ever so slightly to move one of my legs out from under the covers. When I did, my hand brushed what I hoped was a radio that Tanner had left for me to communicate with him if I needed it. I jerked it to my face, nearly braining myself with it, hit the button, and all but screamed his name into it.
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