by Kody Boye
Sanctuary would be gone.
The world would once more be open.
“And it all would’ve been my fault,” she mumbled.
In the cold, confined space, her voice was like that of a God whispering down upon His one remaining disciple: His voice booming with legend, His countenance terrifying despite benevolence. To have heard a sound so simple and mortal after a day of hellish monstrosity was unlike anything she could’ve ever anticipated.
To her lone and fragile ears, it seemed like someone else had spoken—that the sound, breathed deep from the hollows of consciousness, could have never come from something so plain.
Bowing her head, Rose reveled in what little warmth wavered from the candle’s flame.
For the first time that day, she cried.
It didn’t take much to realize what all her mistakes had done.
She couldn’t go back.
It was impossible.
In the waning hours of the evening, she dwelled over the many possibilities not yet presented to her, before succumbing to exhaustion in tears. After crawling into bed—the sheets clean, the blanket soft and supple and ashen-toned—she promptly passed out and lay dead to the world and all its problems.
The following morning, she woke to a world whose color was lost on the memory of a receding storm.
Is it, she thought, then paused, lips quivering, hand reaching. Am I—
By the time it all came together, she was on the verge of tears.
Calm down. Everything’s going to be just fine.
Leaning forward, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the gloom, then waited for the spell to pass before considering her next move.
She couldn’t go back. Even through an addled brain plagued by mental and physical exhaustion, that much was already obvious. The stakes were too high, the risks too great. Even if she could somehow get back to the gate, she had no way to signal for a rescue. And besides—who was to say she’d even be rescued?
There was no reason for anyone to come back for her.
She’d left of her own accord.
She’d made her own choice, her own decision.
That left only one option.
She had to leave.
But when?
Dwelling on it would do her no good.
As the early bird gets the worm and as those behind it are left to sneer in disgust, she pulled the blankets from her body and rolled out of bed with an eerie simplicity most would have found unbecoming of her situation. Her passage to gravity did nothing to escape this fact. Grounded now, within her situation, she could do little but watch and see the world unfold.
Instinctively, and without cause or measure, her hands fell to the bedding.
Perhaps the act was cathartic in the sense that she was repeating common pleasantries of the past. Smoothing out the sheets, tucking them beneath the mattress on all sides but one and then, carefully, folding one corner back at a perfect point—careful, luxurious, making sure they were as perfectly aligned as possible.
These were the things that had died out with the old world, that in but a moment had all but been erased from human history, and in that regard, they made no sense. If there was no purpose for bedding to be properly maintained, then what point was there to do it? In the grand scheme of things, were they not simply fighting for survival? Did that not make them animals?
Rose closed her eyes.
No.
It didn’t make them animals. They were human.
And if one thing was ever proven right, it was that humanity had always persevered.
Did that mean she could as well?
“Well,” Rose said as she backed away from the bed. “There’s only one way to find out.”
She turned and walked out the bedroom door.
The room was left the same.
She pulled a backpack from a closet and jerry-rigged an over-the-shoulder satchel so that it would not interfere with her mobility. Armed with food, supplies, a set of stainless steel kitchen knives and a Glock she’d found in a kitchen cabinet, she donned a flannel shirt that was far too large for her frame, located the ammo in the master bedroom, and drew a parka over her shoulders before stepping out into the world.
The air was stifling.
The wind blew at a steady pace.
The ground was caked with mud.
She ground her heels to test the strength of her legs.
She’d gotten lucky. An undamaged entryway and locked door had ensured her protection from the unrelenting dead. The fact it’d been unoccupied had been a Godsend, but she didn’t want to count her blessings short. The likelihood of finding another safe haven was slim to none. Better to expect the worst than to get jaded by the best.
Besides: nothing could compare to being stranded at sea.
After shrugging the backpack up onto her shoulder and checking to ensure that her machete, baseball bat and Glock were in their proper positions, Rose stepped off the porch and started across the lawn, the scent of fresh earth rising up from beneath her boots.
She was given no indication that today would be an easy feat.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
The humid tang of rain soured her senses.
The urge to retreat to the house that was not a home was overwhelming.
She couldn’t go back. Familiarity was dangerous. She’d get stupid: lazy, indifferent to surroundings other than those around her.
Boxing herself in was a surefire path to Hell.
Instead, she ventured on, even when the sky opened to weep for her unfortunate soul.
Without the luxury of a map to lend input to her decision, she would be forced to navigate the suburban roads until she came across a gas station or other significant location. She’d considered breaking into homes, but soon realized that could cause more harm than good.
If by some chance an alarm system still happened to work…
Rose shook her head.
Beneath the canopy of trees which did little to shield her from the ever-increasing rain, she stopped to survey her surroundings before continuing forward.
The lines of trees would eventually end, replaced by city streets. Then and there she would discover what destiny would make of her.
She was just about to start anew when she heard the snap of a twig to her right.
It couldn’t have been the rain. It’d been too loud, too clear. It—
Rose swung about just in time to see the zombie stumble from between the trees.
Whether or not it was cognizant of its surroundings didn’t matter. When it went down on both knees, she brought the machete up behind her and cleaved its head clean off.
The confrontation made almost no sound.
If there were more—
She left caution to the wind and ran.
So far as she could tell, she hadn’t been pursued.
She trudged from the dense tree line and started across a stretch of highway not unlike the one she’d encountered on her flight from Fort Hope. The land here was mostly flat, the road littered with cars.
She took extra care in avoiding those vehicles whose interiors were splattered with blood or whose seats were occupied by the unsightly corpses of their owners. Experience had shown that even the most decayed of the undead could still exhibit tendencies not unlike those of their fresher selves.
Images were deceiving.
In a dead world, she couldn’t count on anything except a bullet through the head or a blade through the neck.
Near the end of her trek—where highway split off into business district and she was forced to climb over a concrete barrier—she paused to consider what she might be getting herself into.
Here, the carnage was unreal.
How anyone could’ve gotten out was beyond her.
The streets were a barren wasteland of metal and decay, trash and debris and snaking lines of cables whose lengths ran from shattered third-story windows across streets and atop the remnants of cars who had met their unfo
rtunate ends after totaling collisions.
Windows were blown out. Entire sections of buildings had been destroyed under the impacts of trucks. A semi had been tipped over, and crushed beneath it was a car which Rose hoped had been vacated but in reality likely hadn’t.
A scar running the length of the rig all the way down to near where she stood at the far end of the street lay in plain view, as if in its attempt to stop, the vehicle had rolled over and dredged up the asphalt beneath it.
In a word, this place was Hell.
And I thought Newport was bad.
Newport?
Bad?
That was an overstatement.
Everything before this had been a walk in the park.
Just the level of destruction…
Her nostrils flared in response to a pungent odor brought forth by the coming winds.
Though too masked by her surroundings to be definitively made out, she wasn’t going to take her chances.
Drawing her pistol, she racked a bullet into the chamber and prepared herself for the worst before stepping forward.
Even bundled up as she was, nothing could’ve prevented the impression of death.
Declared simply upon one wall in spray paint stylized in the form of haste were the words: The dead walk!
Who could’ve ever imagined such words would be true?
She made her way along the side of the street which she felt would be less hazardous in terms of debris, though as she walked she realized there was little way to escape it. With glass having blown in from all directions and random scraps of metal strewn across her path, it appeared as though this were the labyrinth and she the maiden, and here, within the concrete jungle, there was no way out.
Around each and every corner there could be something dwelling—watching, waiting, persisting unlike anything the natural world could’ve ever ordained, for within this monster’s temple there existed only one god, which no longer saved the righteous from suffering in the living world.
She navigated the fields of glass.
Electrical cords swayed above her head.
Every dark space was a tomb in which she could be forever forgotten.
At the intersection—directly where the big rig had come to rest—Rose craned her head about the area and tried to determine where she should proceed next.
A flicker of movement caught her eye.
She froze.
Her finger went to the trigger.
Her eyes settled on the vehicle directly across from her.
It raised its head from the bed of the truck and stared at her with eyes grapelike and sour.
Common rationale would’ve dictated immediate action.
What kept her from bolting into a full-out run was the fact that it hadn’t screamed.
If it possessed vocal cords—if it had really wanted to alert others to her presence—
The woman—if it could even be called that, given the state of decomposition—extended an arm in a feeble attempt to reach out to the only human in the area, mouth opening, lips extending.
Rose’s eyes followed the carnage of its person to the monument of its destruction.
Her lower half had been crushed.
The corpse posed no danger.
She briefly toyed with the idea of ending its miserable existence, if only to safeguard the next unfortunate person that might happen to pass by, but realized the commotion would likely only draw attention to herself. She lowered her gun.
The dead woman wheezed as she passed by, its fruitless attempts to latch onto her gleaning only the air in Rose’s wake.
She rounded the corner expecting to see nothing more than what she’d just encountered.
Sadly, her premonition was accurate.
Rose sighed.
With little choice other than to proceed, she started forward, knowing more than well she wouldn’t clear the city by nightfall.
The day ended in the isolated confines of a cubicle.
It was cold—really, really cold.
She wasn’t sure how she’d handle this.
Alone, sequestered in the nooks and crannies between the cubicle wall and the solid oak desk, she struggled to dispel the notion that she was in constant danger, but to no avail.
Upon the second floor of a four-story building, locked in a deserted office and within an array of cubicles, every door checked, every space examined… the fire escape led directly into an alley that dumped out into a passage that would allow her to escape completely undetected, should the need arise, and the tinted windows promised a front that would render her completely undetectable. Yet every sound—every bird, every dog, every distant car alarm or the sound of something possibly exploding or crashing or falling from a rooftop parking space—
If she’d gotten here just a few hours later—
You gotta stop, she thought.
She couldn’t do this anymore.
No more checking, no more scouring, no more panicking to ensure her barricades would not break under the slightest pressure—if she continued at this rate, she’d die of exhaustion.
“Time to sleep,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes, but they shot right back open.
It took her a moment to realize she was the one who’d spoken.
She’d been with Lyra for so long…
She clamped her eyes shut in what she realized was a fruitless attempt to keep from crying. The tears hot upon her face, tracing lines of agony, bringing anew the reality of the cold—she ducked her head into her coat and tried to console herself with the notion that she’d made the right decision.
Because of her, people were alive.
Because of her, the girl and those two men would be safe.
Just gotta keep telling yourself that, she thought. You made the right decision.
“You did the right thing,” she again whispered beneath her breath. “You did the right thing. You did the right thing…”
She repeated that for the longest time.
Eventually, she fell asleep.
She didn’t wake up for a long time, after that.
The crystalized formations upon the tinted windows ushered in the morning’s light in a way that made it seemed diluted and not completely of the natural world. Cast slightly in blue, with hues of brown and yellow mixed in to create a dingy green, Rose opened her eyes to find herself first confused, then mystified as the notion of human architecture finally set in.
They did this, she thought, tracing the uneven patterns upon the ceiling. The people. The ones who came before.
She allowed the revelation to strike her only for a few further moments before she pushed herself to her feet.
Almost immediately, she set about preparing for her next move.
She had to figure out where she was going.
From a satchel whose sole purpose had been to house the most important of her belongings, she pulled a travel guide lifted from a nearby gas station and spread it across the desktop before her. Its symbols plain, its intricacies limited to the colors of the road, she surveyed her options in the limited way of an educated guess, and tentatively reached for the Sharpie protruding from a nearby cup of pens.
Her options were endless.
North, toward Canada—
Along the coast, toward the south or even greater New England—
West, maybe even slightly east—
Where, if anywhere, would be safe?
If anywhere was even safe. She stopped to consider the likelihood of other establishments like Fort Hope arising in the midst of the zombie apocalypse and realized the chances were slim to none. Most would have flocked to emergency camps per the request of the government. Military bases would’ve likely been swarmed, and like hospitals, been prime sources for infection. Even rural areas—which normally would’ve been a complete godsend—seemed completely out of the question.
So far removed from society, she would not only have to contend with the elements, but also nature and the dange
r it offered.
And the supplies…
Rose sighed.
This wasn’t going to be an easy decision, whichever one it happened to be.
After a quick moment of hesitation, she went to work deciphering her coordinates.
It turned out it was easier than she’d thought it would be.
She determined her location to be somewhere outside a place called Fall River. Unaware of its namesake, she at first struggled to trace the trajectory that had been provided to her by the military upon her emancipation.
Her desperate flight and quick getaway could’ve easily landed her anywhere, and with little metropolitan activity to guide her in way of landmarks, it was almost impossible to determine where exactly she was. However, as she considered the highway, and then the long stretch of road that wound along the coast, she came to realize that the path she’d taken had not been all that complicated at all.
Sheer abandon had led her to civilization.
Intuition had guided her along back roads.
Even paranoia, as sick as it happened to be, had encouraged her not to tread untested waters.
She’d thought she was being stupid—the little girl who’d snuck out after bedtime to watch scary movies.
Rose lifted her head.
From her place near the second-story window, she had a perfect view of the cemetery she’d purposely avoided.
After all this time, she knew where she was.
But now that she knew, where would she go?
The enormity hit her instantly.
As if incapable of her own intuition, Rose stumbled back and into another desk.
She struggled to regain her breath.
The temptation to cave to the sweet bliss of ignorance was almost too good to pass up.
No, she thought. You can’t.
It would be too easy to just sit back and take another day, to say, It’s ok. Now that you’ve found where you are, you need to stop to make a plan. But what plan, Rose thought with grief and utter disdain, would that be?
What exactly did she want to do? Did she wish to survive? Make it out of this cruel and unhappy place? Find her utopia upon a deserted island? Or did she just wish to keep going—to draw purpose from thin air and mold it into something she felt worthwhile?
