by Powell, Lora
TWENTY-SEVEN
DAY 14
The rain had been pounding the metal roof over our heads for over a day. At first, the sound had lulled me into the best sleep that I had had in weeks. But now, the constant drumming had started to wear on my nerves. Our already gloomy hideout was even darker, the rain clouds keeping the sunlight from even making it to the trees above. With no way to really get dry quickly and no spare clothes, we all stayed indoors even more than usual. I was starting to feel trapped.
Wandering to the door that led outside, I fiddled with our makeshift fix. It did the job but wasn’t going to keep out anyone determined to get inside. Looking behind me, I found Shawn and Fallon playing cards at one of the round tables. The discovery of the well-worn deck was giving them something to do to pass the time, but I’d never really liked card games. I was on my own.
Suddenly unable to stay cooped up in the dark building for another second, I opened the door.
Outside, the rain still came down in the wind-driven sheets. The small overhang above the door kept the worst of it off of me as I stepped out. Leaving the interior was just what I needed, and I instantly felt lighter. I didn’t even mind that I was already wet from the knees down because of the wind carrying the rain to me despite the roof.
The entire world looked grey. The rain kept me from being able to see it clearly. The dense underbrush that marked the start of the forest appeared blurry, even though I knew that it wasn’t all that far. Leaning back against the open door frame, I crossed my arms and settled in to watch the rain.
I had been standing there for several minutes, lulled into a semi-trance by the repetitive sights and sounds of the storm, when movement in the distance caught my attention. Standing up straight, I focused on where I was sure something other than the rain had moved. I didn’t have to wait long before I saw it again. Down the road, far enough away that I couldn’t make out anything clearly, a distinctly human shape emerged from the gloom.
“Guys.”
I kept my voice down, and my eyes trained on the figure. They moved along slowly. I couldn’t tell if it was a zombie or someone still alive.
My low level of worry ratcheted up to blatant alarm when three more figures took shape in the rain. “Guys!” I hissed louder and dared a look behind me to see if they had heard me this time. When Shawn looked up with alarm, I knew they had heard, and swung back around to watch the figures in the distance.
I backed back through the doorway, keeping my gaze locked on the four distant shapes as Shawn appeared by my side. Raising an arm, I pointed, drawing his attention to what had alarmed me. We watched the distant figures slowly draw closer for a few seconds, before we closed the door and secured it the best that we could.
“What is it?” Fallon asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe people. Maybe zombies.”
“Zombies, as in plural?” She looked at me in alarm.
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“I saw four,” Shawn answered her as he began to drag one of the heavy tables toward the door. “We need to be ready. If they’re zombies, our best bet is to stay quiet and hope they don’t figure out that we are in here.”
I cringed at the screech the table made against the floor. Moving to it, I grabbed one side and lifted. Shawn followed suit, and we carried the table the rest of the way to the door. We set it down up against the door. I didn’t know if it would be any help, but it seemed better than doing nothing.
I couldn’t see out of the high windows that this building had. Pulling a chair over, I used it to gain the needed height. Shawn and Fallon were already looking out another window. It took me a second to locate the figures because I was looking in the wrong area. They were much closer to the building than I would have figured. Silently, the three of us watched as they drew closer.
As the four figures turned off of the little back road and into the camp driveway, they finally were clear enough to start to make out details. I didn’t think that they were zombies.
They moved like people. The one in the lead was taller and broad-shouldered. Close behind him, two smaller figures huddled close together, and a tall thin figure was in the rear. All of them seemed to be doing their best to avoid the wind and rain while moving steadily toward our building.
I practically held my breath, worried absurdly that they would somehow be able to hear my breathing. At the next window over, Shawn and Fallon both held completely still, warily watching the people approach. When the closest figure drew within a few feet of Shawn’s jeep, he paused to look in through the windows. He appeared to say something to the people behind him, but I couldn’t hear what it was over the roar of the rain on the roof. As one, the group looked back to the door of our building. They seemed to huddle closer together as they watched. I could only guess that they were probably looking for any signs of life, unsure if whoever drove the jeep would still be among the living.
After a long minute of staring, from both sides, the leader slowly began to walk toward the front door. Alarmed, I looked over to my companions. There were four of them and only three of us. And our weapons consisted of a ball bat and two kitchen knives. If the newcomers wanted to cause us any trouble, we would have difficulty defending ourselves. Sharing a silent glance between us, I knew that the three of us were all thinking the same thing.
Another look outside told me that we were out of time. The man was near the overhang. No one seemed to know what to do, and panicking a little, I yelled, “Stop!”
Fallon made a noise that I interpreted as distress, but my yell had the desired effect. The man came to a startled stop. Squinting through the rain, he looked around himself before focusing on the door again. One of the smaller figures came up to stand next to him, and she was finally close enough for me to see that it was a woman.
There was another long moment of silence while we all stared again. The people outside shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another, no doubt soaked and freezing, and probably nervous about being standing out there while we watched them from inside. I started to feel a little bit bad for them.
They were people, just like us. I couldn’t see any weapons, but that didn’t mean much with the rain and gloom concealing the details from me. But the fact that there was a woman with the big man made me feel slightly better, even if that thought was a little ridiculous.
The woman next to the man was the first one to break our stalemate. “We don’t want any trouble. We’re just looking for a place to get out of the rain.”
None of us knew what to do. I could see it plainly written on their faces. Shawn looked over to me, seemingly asking me what I thought we should do. Then I looked at Fallon. A couple of days ago, we hadn’t known her, either. But she hadn’t proven dangerous. In fact, she was the one who fixed the broken door. And if we hadn’t helped her, she would probably be dead by now.
If we stopped helping each other, humanity was as good as dead. We needed each other more than ever, if any of us were going to survive the zombies.
“I think we should let them in,” I whispered.
TWENTY-EIGHT
DAY 14
Fallon shook her head rapidly at my whisper, obviously not agreeing with me. Shawn looked out again before turning back to face me.
“Are you sure, Bri?” We were a team and had learned to trust each other in the short time that we’d known each other. Both of us would probably be dead by now if it weren’t for the other.
“No.” I looked worriedly back outside. The people were still standing there, waiting for our response. “But I don’t think we can turn them away.”
“Ok.” He raised his voice to be heard over the downpour. “Are you armed?”
The people looked at each other for a second before the big man answered, “We have two knives, a machete, a hatchet, and a gun.”
The gun, in particular, was what I was most worried about.
I watched as the two remaining people moved closer. There was another woman, a
nd the rail-thin, tall figure seemed to be a teenage boy. They all looked miserable, soaked, and exhausted. When I looked back to Shawn, I found him looking at me. He looked concerned, but I knew him. He wasn’t likely to leave those people outside.
“We will open the door if you leave the gun outside.” Until I had a chance to get to know them a little, I wasn’t crazy about them having a weapon like that.
Out in the gloom, the burly man looked to the closest woman. They exchanged a few words before he pulled a small handgun from under his jacket. Holding it up for us to easily see, he took the last steps under the overhang and set the weapon on the floor.
I jumped down off of my chair and went to the table. Shawn, and a frowning Fallon, followed me. The three of us pulled the table away from the door. Arranging ourselves just inside the door, nerves jangled just under my skin as Shawn began to open the door. It was a risk we were taking, letting the bigger group in.
The door swung open, revealing the group of people crowded under the overhang just on the other side.
The man was first. He glanced warily behind himself before slowly stepping across the threshold. My first impression of him hadn’t been wrong. The guy was huge in every way possible. The rain had matted his black hair to his head and he hadn’t bothered to zip his jacket back up. He was already soaked clear through anyhow. Brown eyes darted around the cafeteria, taking in the three of us and looking for any hint of danger.
Behind him, the three others hurried inside, eager to get out of the rain, and probably to get to relative safety indoors. The one woman, in particular, stayed close to the man. She wasn’t all that small but compared to him, she looked tiny. When she stepped through the door, I noticed the hatchet in her hand that had been hidden by the weather. She clutched the weapon in a shaking hand, her own eyes searching the room.
The teenager looked like he was ready to drop where he stood. These people all were drained and unhealthy looking, but the teen was by far the worst. His eyes were sunk back in his skull and a complexion that probably used to be tanned was too white. His clothes were baggy on his frame as if he had lost a significant amount of weight. The last woman came up behind him and wrapped a supporting arm around his torso. She was the oldest member of the group. Even soaked from the rain, filthy, and tired, I could clearly see the grey that streaked her hair and the lines that had started to spread on her face.
“Stop! Are you bitten?” Shawn’s alarmed question had me searching for whatever he had seen that I had missed.
There. The leg of the teenager’s pants was torn. It was hard to see, but the rain hadn’t completely washed away all traces of the blood that had soaked through the material.
The man raised a placating hand. “It’s not a bite. He got cut running from the zombies in that little town yesterday.”
I looked warily at the teen. Seeming to sigh, he slowly leaned down and pulled the leg of his pants up. The wound underneath made me cringe. The gash was deep, and ran through the middle of his calf. They hadn’t made any effort to treat it, maybe they didn’t have any medical supplies to do so, and the skin around the wound was already turning an angry red. Open to contaminants like it was, it was only a matter of time before his leg became seriously infected.
“I’m Bill.” The man told us when he saw that we were placated seeing the teen’s leg. “This is my wife, Maya, and this is Carrie and Devon.” He gestured to the other three. “We’ve been walking for a while, now. Thanks for letting us in.”
“I’m Shawn. This is Bri and Fallon.” He didn’t seem to know what else to say, and he stopped there.
I jumped in when the silence threatened to become uncomfortable. “We have some basic medical supplies. I can take a look at your leg if you want me to.” I directed my statement to Devon.
He smiled weakly at me. “That would be great.”
“Ok. I’ll be right back.” I hurried into the office with a backward glance at my people. In the supply closet, I pulled out everything that seemed helpful to treat a serious wound. I was no doctor, but it looked to me like the teen could have really used a trip to the hospital. I hoped he had had his tetanus shot.
When I stepped back into the cafeteria, I found everyone sitting around the tables in a wary truce. No one looked comfortable, but at least Shawn and the newcomers were talking. Fallon sat slightly to the side of everyone else and she still didn’t look all that happy with how things were working out. I didn’t have time to worry about her at the moment. I wanted to get Devon’s leg cleaned up the best I could and was eager to get back to Shawn. I didn’t like leaving him essentially all alone to deal with the new people.
“Ok, let’s see what we can do with these.” I dumped my armload of supplies on the table and scooted a chair closer to the teen. He had used another chair to prop his leg up and pulled his jeans above the wound again. Up close, the cut didn’t look any better. Whatever he had sliced it on, must have been really sharp. There was one deep gash that went right into the muscle of his calf.
While I went to work on his leg, I listened to the conversation that I had interrupted with my entrance.
“We ran out of gas a few miles before the exit to that town. We thought that we would probably be able to find some somewhere and carry it back to the car, but as soon as we hit the main street, the zombies started coming from everywhere.” Maya shuddered a little in remembrance. “We didn’t know which way to go. I thought that it was going to be the end for us, but then we heard someone shouting at us. It was Devon, and he led us away from the zombies, but he got hurt. We ran into the woods and just kept on going.”
“You just met them?” I questioned Devon as I tried to figure out how best to bandage his leg.
He nodded. “Yeah, yesterday. I was starting to think that I was the only one left alive in the whole town, and then there they were. I’d been hiding in my attic, and then I heard voices. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.”
I gave Devon a tight smile of understanding. My few days alone in my bathroom had been one of the worst times in my life. I could only imagine that a couple of weeks, all alone and hiding in an attic, had been brutal for the teen.
TWENTY-NINE
DAY 14
The rain finally stopped sometime in the late afternoon. Bill and Maya had been keeping a watch out from the windows, and I had to admit that having the extra sets of eyes was a big help. With only three of us, it made the shifts tediously long. But the four new additions had jumped right in with helping out, and I was already noticing the difference.
With more than twice the people now hiding out in the cafeteria, there was near constant chatter. Someone was always talking to someone else. Even Fallon seemed to be starting to thaw towards them, and she was currently sitting at a table with Devon, the two of them making use of the deck of cards.
Shawn had been talking with Carrie for a while. I could hear bits and pieces of their conversation from where I was adding drops of bleach to our water supply. More people meant that we would need more of everything, and I wanted to be prepared. We didn’t have much, but the water was one thing that we did have in abundance. Maya had produced a few cans of fruit from the backpack that she carried, and they had readily shared with us. They seemed like genuinely good people, and after only a few hours with them, I was already glad that we had decided to let them in.
From what I had been able to gather, they had had a rough road getting this far. Their group was larger when they left their homes in search of a safer place to stay. Their group had consisted of Bill, Maya, Carrie, Carrie’s husband, and another man who had also lived on the same street as the rest of them. I didn’t have to ask to know that the two men being absent from their group was a bad thing.
The group had worked their way west in search of a place with fewer zombies. They had stopped a few times, but it never lasted long before they were overrun and had to leave. When they had run out of gas on the highway, they had planned to siphon a few gallons from a car in town and cont
inue on their way. But the crowd of undead had foiled their plans, chasing them in the opposite direction of their vehicle, and they met Devon in the process. They had escaped the zombies in the trees and had been walking since, hoping to find a place to get out of the rain and decide what to do next. Then they had emerged from the woods onto the little back road that led them directly to the camp.
Shawn relayed the basics of our own story to Carrie, and she made a noise of sympathy when he told her that we lost someone too. She was disheartened when she found out that we had been running in the opposite direction from her group, and that there was no safer place than this one, as far as we had found.
Finished with my task with the water, I walked over and pulled out a chair next to Shawn. ”The water will be ready in half an hour.”
Carrie nodded to me. “Thank you. I don’t know where we would be if you all hadn’t decided to let us in.”
Getting dry wasn’t easy, and the woman sitting across from me still looked damp. Her long graying hair was drying in greasy looking strands that lay limply plastered to her skull. The strain and loss of the past couple of weeks had left her with a haunted cast to her features.
Basically, she looked awful. All four of them did, not that I thought that we looked much better. At least Shawn, Fallon, and I were reasonably rested. I looked to Shawn. “Why don’t you and I take the first watch tonight, and let everyone else sleep.” I didn’t add that they needed it more than we did.
“That sounds like a plan. Carrie, we’ve been sleeping in a nurse’s office connected to the main office. There’s a couch and the floor is carpeted, so it’s definitely more comfortable than sleeping anywhere else.”
