by Megan Berry
Copyright © 2019 by Megan Berry
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen.
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter One
“It’s been five days…” Silas says as we lay together underneath an enormous pile of blankets that we collected from the house we’re currently squatting in. The garbage can fire burns in the middle of the room near the cracked window. It’s nearly burned out, but that’s okay since we need to get up soon anyway. He doesn’t finish his sentence, but he doesn’t have to.
We’ve been up and down the river bank, searching for my dad, Jack, and Ryan, but so far, we haven’t found even the smallest trace of them. We’ve gone miles upstream, just to turn around and walk back, and do the same thing in the other direction. We’ve moved camp each night, clearing the houses of people long dead. We’ve encountered large groups of zombies, dodged men patrolling in the woods, and walked miles and miles until both our feet were blistered, and still nothing...
“Tell me again,” I say, rolling over to face Silas as he lets out a sigh. He knows what’s coming. It’s the same thing we’ve gone over every day since that first night. I just can’t let it go though. “You’re sure you saw them jump in?” I prompt, and Silas nods.
“Positive,” he tells me for at least the tenth time. “They jumped in before I did, right after you. I was the last one in the water,” he confirms.
I let out a deep breath as my mind critically scans over this small piece of information. I want so badly for it to mean something—to be the clue to cracking the mystery of where the rest of our missing group went—but it’s still just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle. I can’t make it reveal anything more to me than it did yesterday, or the day before.
I don’t even realize I’m chewing away until Silas presses his finger to my bottom lip to stop me. His touch sends a small thrill through my body, but I brutally ignore it. There is no space in my brain for anything right now, other than finding Dad and the others.
“Do you think…?” I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence, but I don’t have to. Silas knows. He always seems to know exactly what I’m thinking, sometimes better than I do.
“I don’t think they drowned,” he confirms.
I slowly release the breath I’ve been holding. “How do you know?” I press.
He lets out another sigh as he rolls onto his back and puts his arm behind his head. I know I’m annoying him. He surprises me when he reaches out and pulls me closer against his chest, rather than snapping at me like he might’ve done even a few days ago.
“I can’t know for sure, but this is what I think…” he begins, and I’m hanging on his every word. “We haven’t found any bodies.” He winces when my eyes go wide, and my face turns pale. “Think about it,” he cajoles me. “There are three of them missing, even if someone didn’t make it; the odds are in our favor that someone survived. And the fact that we haven’t found anyone…” He shrugs. “I think they’re all together somewhere and they’ve holed up to recuperate.”
I want so badly to believe him, except one thing doesn’t ring true. My dad. He wouldn’t just hole up. He would be sick with worry wondering where I was, and he would be out looking for me—if he could. That is the part that scares me so badly. Why haven’t I found him out along the river looking for me? “Silas…” I start to say, but he interrupts me by pressing a kiss to my lips.
“It’s daylight now. We should get back to searching,” he tells me.
I nod as I try to find enough energy to toss off the blankets and get moving.
Silas finds his motivation before I do. Once he throws back the blankets and the cool air hits me, I get up as well and pull on an extra sweater and my coat. I go to the bathroom, using a bucket of river water to flush, and then I meet Silas back downstairs where he hands me a granola bar. I shudder as I take it, but my body needs the fuel.
Silas pours another small bucket of water over the coals in the garbage can and it hisses and spits, smoking like crazy as the embers go out. We don’t want to accidentally start a fire, who knows how long the blaze would go unchecked now that we can’t just call the fire department. Plus, it would be a pretty big giveaway to the men in the woods that we’re still in the area.
“Ready for another day?” Silas asks.
I nod even though another day of combing the river for any sign of Dad, Jack, or Ryan, is the last thing I want to be doing. I just want to find them already, so we can go home and leave this horrible place. My every morning starts with this same sense of dread, what if we don’t find them? What if we do, but they aren’t them anymore?
We step outside to the snarl of a zombie. My knife is already in my hand, but Silas reaches him first and spikes him through the temple. The zombie drops like a sack of bricks, and I barely spare it a glance as I step over its body. The days have been unseasonably warm, and I try not to breathe in the scent of moldy, decaying flesh—I’ve been spoiled by the cold weather and the frozen zombies back home.
We head towards the sound of roaring water, and it’s only a short walk down the bank. The house we stayed in was practically right on the river’s edge and was probably somebody’s vacation home before the outbreak. It had a very nice deck with a hot tub that overlooked the water. I’d spent a lot of time out there last night, perched on the top of the hot tub cover, staring towards the darkened river and hoping to see or hear some sign of the others, until Silas finally made me come inside.
I begin to imagine what kind of lives the people who owned the house might’ve had before. I’d stared at their smiling faces in the photographs lined up on the mantle. They’d looked happy. It’s too depressing though because they’re most likely dead now—even the kids. So, I force myself to think about nothing instead and just focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
Silas isn’t chatty either as we reach the bank. The sound of the water is nice, but I can’t let myself enjoy it too much since it’s the main reason I can’t find my dad. It also masks the moans of the dead, which is a pain in the ass and especially dangerous when they sneak up on you. We’ve had more than one zombie come charging out of the trees at us, not hearing it until it was practically ripping the flesh off our backs.
“Let’s continue in the same direction as yesterday,” Silas says.
I let out a grunt of agreement as I adjust the straps on my backpack. It feels heavier and heavier every day I spend trudging up and down this river bank, even though in reality it’s getting lighter since our supplies are dwindling. We’ve spent our nights combing through the houses we’ve camped out in, but there’s almost never anything useable left. Silas thinks scouts from Louisville have probably scavenged this whole area and cleaned it out. Yesterday, he suggested that if we were to find a place off the beaten path—away from the river—we would have a better chance at restocking. But I don’t want to risk missing the others if we stray too far. I just want to find Dad and the others, everything else can wait.
It rained last night, so the ground is wet and soupy. I wince as my boot sinks down well past t
he ankle, and I struggle to pull myself free. The mud puts up quite the fight before it finally let’s go with a noise that I can only describe as a disturbing slurp. The sky is gray. As if on cue, the clouds open up and it starts to rain again. Silas digs in his bag and pulls out two cheap, clear plastic ponchos, he unfolds them and hands the first one to me. I shake it out and throw it on over my head, and I’m grateful that it’s loose enough to cover my backpack too. The only thing worse than wet clothes, are wet supplies when you really need them.
Even with the rain slicker on, it’s wet and cold and miserable. The plastic keeps making a crinkling sound that has me constantly looking over my shoulder with each rattle.
We walk all morning. My teeth are chattering by the time Silas stops for ‘lunch.’ He hands me another granola bar and I try not to wince.
“Maybe we should stop for the day?” he suggests.
I look at him sharply. I know it’s raining like hell, but it’s unlike Silas to give up on something just because of a little wet and cold.
I realize then that he’s looking at me with concern on his face. Oh. He’s worried about me; this has nothing to do with him needing a rest or him being wet and cold. I force my blue lips to stop shaking and give him a forced smile.
“I think we should keep going,” I tell him.
He purses his own lips as he stares at me, considering. Finally, he nods and pops the rest of his granola bar into his mouth. I can’t help but notice that his is the gross plain granola kind and the one he gave me has chocolate chips. I feel my annoyance at him melt away. It’s not his fault that we’re in this situation—he’s just trying to take care of me like he always does.
I walk over and give him a hug and our poncho’s crinkle loudly when we touch. Silas wraps his arms around me, and for one blissful moment everything else melts away. It lasts about ten seconds before I feel Silas stiffen in my arms and hear his sharp intake of breath. He shoves me away so hard that I fly sideways and hit the ground.
The air is knocked out of my lungs and my next breath doesn’t come easily as I struggle to force air back into my body. I look up at Silas angrily, but the anger is quickly replaced with fear when I see him struggling with the damn poncho, trying to pull his knife out of his belt while three zombies stagger towards him out of the trees. They are way too close for comfort. When the first one reaches him, Silas has to give up on his search for a weapon and use his bare hands to push the zombie back by its shoulders.
The zombie snarls and snaps its teeth. Swinging its arm, it whacks Silas across the side of his head. I watch him stagger back and fear for his safety courses through me, awakening my frozen limbs from their temporary stasis. I grab for my own knife.
I immediately realize why Silas is having so much trouble. It’s nearly impossible to reach the holster at my waist with the poncho on. The cheap plastic hangs down well past my knee and stretched out over my backpack the way it is, the material is taut and immobile. I attempt to worm my hand underneath the poncho but get fed up and finally rip it off over the top of my head. It doesn’t come off without a fight, and it makes me glad the zombies haven’t spotted me yet. The rain starts permeating the last remaining dry areas of my body, but I don’t care as my fingers finally wrap securely around a weapon. I run into the fray with my enormous Crocodile Dundee knife held at the ready. Silas always uses a smaller blade. He claims he likes the accuracy, but I don’t have half the strength that he does, so I prefer the bigger blade since it inflicts the most damage.
I grip the handle of my knife with both hands as I approach the smallest of the three zombies. I sneak up on it from the side. Since zombies don’t seem to have the best peripheral vision, I’m right beside the stinking thing before it seems to sense me. It turns on me with an angry hiss, but I’m ready. I steel my nerves and use the entire force of my body to drive the blade through its eye socket. The knife’s tip punctures the brain, but my momentum is short lived as the blade’s width becomes too much and my thrust is stopped by the zombie’s occipital bone. My knife is too large to go any deeper, but it doesn’t matter because the zombie goes still like an animatronic that someone has just pulled the plug on. The disgusting creature crumples to the ground and its momentum pulls my knife from my hand. I don’t panic though because practice has taught me that it’s easier to remove the blade once the zombie is down on the ground.
I plant my boot on the zombie’s forehead to stop it from coming up with my knife, and then I give the blade a series of sharp, short tugs. It comes free of the zombie’s face with a wet slurp, and I don’t bother wiping the blade since I intend on using it again right away.
Silas now has a stick that he must’ve grabbed off the ground somewhere, and he’s using it to hold the two remaining zombies at bay. He prods the first one in the chest to push it back and then swings quickly to do the same thing with the other. It seems to be working, but it’s a dangerous game because eventually Silas will tire out and the zombies won’t. He could run, but I know that he would never do that. I take a deep breath and jog over, looking for my opening. I again choose the smaller of the two zombies, even though the remaining zombs are both male and much larger than me. I pause and fully assess the situation before tossing my knife to the ground. It isn’t going to work for this. I don’t really feel like going hand-to-hand in combat with a nearly six-foot tall zombie. The height makes it harder for me to reach the top of his head and when he inevitably starts clawing and scratching, his reach is going to be much farther than mine.
Instead, I grab the small axe that I keep hanging from my backpack. Their attention is still entirely focused on Silas, so I have the time to make the switch. I toss my pack to the ground as well. I know Silas wouldn’t like my treatment of my knife, or of the pack that carries everything I own in this world, but I rationalize that he also wouldn’t enjoy being bitten and zombified either.
I sneak up behind the zombie I’ve chosen, using the distance between us to raise the hatchet over my head. I bring it down at the base of the zombie’s spine. The creature stiffens but doesn’t fall. This is exactly why I hate the big ones! I raise my arms back again and again and hack away, splitting the rotten skin open like an overripe peach and chipping away at its spine until, finally, the spinal cord severs, and the creature falls to the ground twitching.
Silas has his stick pressed into the chest of the last remaining zombie—holding its gnashing, cracked and blackened teeth at bay. While he watches me, he nods his approval for helping even the odds. The rabid beast hasn’t spotted me yet or appears to notice that he is the only creature left standing. Silas is still wearing his rain slicker, so I know his chances of gaining access to his weapons are slim to none, especially with his hands full. I toss my axe near his feet. My arms are too tired to try a repeat performance, especially with the six-foot two-inch towering mass of rotting flesh currently snarling at Silas.
Silas shoots me an appreciative look and forces the zombie backwards with a well-placed shot to its face with the stick. The resulting sound is a crunch that makes me wince, and the zombie stumbles. It’s not much, but it gives Silas enough time to bend down and scoop up the axe. I barely have time to anticipate his next move before the zombie is down on the ground with the axe planted firmly in the middle of its forehead. I look away from the gruesome sight. For some reason it reminds me vividly of last summer, when Dad and I had trouble splitting open this enormous watermelon that we bought at the supermarket. I quickly force myself to think about something else, anything else. It’s bad enough the zombies have ruined my future; I don’t need them retroactively intruding on my past too.
“That was a close one Blondie,” Silas says as he pulls my axe from the zombie’s forehead and wipes it clean on the zombie’s own shirt before handing it back to me. I nod my thanks as I tuck the axe back into its holder on my backpack. Silas is still wearing the poncho and I frown at it as I walk forward, picking up my knife as I go. I slice the damn rain slicker down the middle before pushin
g it off his body.
His eyes go wide at my behavior, and I shoot him a grin as I tuck my knife away. “That thing almost got you killed,” I tell him, tossing it to the ground beside my own. I barely resist the childish urge to stomp on them both—death traps!
“I know,” Silas tells me seriously, and then a small grin breaks out on his face. “Do you feel like cutting off any more of my clothes?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
I can’t help but laugh, despite all the crazy stuff that just happened. I give him an assessing look, like I’m actually thinking about it, and then shake my head.
“Not your clothes, no,” I tell him, shooting him a meaningful look downward. I watch him frown. Then I blow him a kiss and dance away out of his reach as he makes a half-hearted attempt to grab me.
And just like that we carry on down the river like nothing happened. The rain doesn’t abate, but at least now I know there are worse things than having to absorb a little moisture—not being able to reach your weapon in time when a zombie wants to make you their breakfast is definitely one of them.
We’ve just been attacked by zombies, and I’m so wet and cold that it feels like I’ve been standing in an icy shower with limited water pressure for the last ten years. But my mood has improved, and I think Silas’s has too. There’s nothing like nearly getting killed to remind you that you’re still alive, and that despite all the stuff going wrong in your life right now, you really do want to stay that way.
Silas shortens his stride to match mine and reaches down to grab my hand, holding it as we walk. I lace my fingers with his, and he shoots me a grin that ignites a tiny flame of happiness somewhere in the frozen nether regions of my chest, despite the weather, the zombies, and the fact that we still haven’t found Dad and the others.
I truly don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have Silas.
Chapter Two
“I’m getting so sick of this,” I complain, throwing my backpack down on the floor in defeat and giving in to my childish alter ego. I BARELY resist the urge to stomp my feet. Silas frowns at me, but I don’t care at this particular moment because I’m wet and cold. My happy glow has long since abandoned me. It’s been a long, hellish day—though not nearly long enough since we didn’t find the others, again!
