The Undead Zed

by Jason Durman

  "If you find her, God willing, I hope she's worth it."

  "I will." Denver replied, quietly, but his voice edged with steel, almost in a feral growl.

  "I'm gonna find her."

  Chapter 13

  It was an awfully bright morning, and the sunlight hitting over the buildings nearly blinded the figure standing above. He blocked out the offending rays with his arm, and squinted down at the smallish-looking figure of Bass Mouth, who was standing in an alley below, holding an ancient video camera and peering up towards the roof.

  " Are you sure about this, Den?" he called from below, his voice echoing up the walls of the gap. "It's a heck of a jump!"

  " Positive!" Yells the figure on the roof, holding up an ungloved hand to his mouth as he yells down.

  "If Belle can do it, I can!"

  He's actually scared, fear pooling in his stomach and chest as he looks at the darkness in between roofs, making him clench his fists in anticipation. It is, however, the good kind of scared. The kind that got your heart beating and the blood pumping and the air filling your lungs.

  The kind of fear that made you feel alive.

  He took a deep breath, the morning air still cool.

  " I'm ready when you are, Seb."

  " Cam's running." Bass Mouth replied. "I'm ready when you are. Lett'r rip."

  Denver took another deep breath, and carefully backed away from the ledge, the darkness of the gap looming like a void in the blazing white reflection of the rooftops.

  He stared at the void.

  The void stared back.

  Then, he ran, shoes slapping the pavement, and then there was the ledge- a push off, a kick, and he flew.

  And then it warped. He was still flying, but there was no roof or camera or sunshine. Only void, and something, someone below him, human shaped and screaming, falling, his hands claws were out and the smell of blood, of sick…

  Then it wasn't a person under him- something bigger, hairier, angrier , with foam and teeth and claws even bigger than his, snapping and roaring and tossing…

  Bite tear kill swipe

  I wake up.

  It's been awhile since I remembered something. I try to think about everything that happened, but it feels like it's leaving me…

  Bass Mouth...roof..camera...bear... It's all just noise.

  Even though my mattress is far away from Betsy, I feel hot. My coat is soaked in sweat, and my hands shake.

  It's morning, but the sun isn't out. The sky is just all grey.

  "Look who's up."

  It's Trevor, and he's sitting at the map table with Russ, who still looks sleepy.

  "You were snoring like all heck last night, kid," he says, looking at the maps. "Do you have a cold or something? I coulda thought that there was a bear in the room."

  I feel my face getting hot, and I cough a little. "Yeah. It's a cold," I say, turning away from him.

  Eve is up, too, and she hands me a can of beans. "We're not heading out straight away," she tells me, while I grab a fork. "The boys are looking for a different route."

  "Different route?" I ask. We already went really slow yesterday. When it was just me, I would go wherever I wanted. I didn't plan.

  But I also didn't know where I was going. I tell myself.

  Eve nods. "They're trying to find the best route to avoid another horde."

  "Horde?"

  "Big bunch of zombies. The one we hit yesterday was a bit of a surprise, it ate through a good amount of our ammo supply."

  "Why was it a surprise?"

  She shrugs. "I suppose we were a little spoiled, in the last town. We cleared out most of the area, and hadn't had any runs-ins for awhile."

  She pauses. "That, and, well, we thought the rest might have died off."

  "Died off?"

  "We figured that dehydration would kill them, or, failing that, the cold. I have to say, most of them looked like shit-, though I'm surprised there were so many left kicking."

  I finish the beans. It's not much, but I can't ask for more. There aren't very many cans with us.

  Maybe we'll find some more in the next safe room, I think. It doesn't change the empty feeling in my stomach.

  "We're moving, folks," says Russ. I put the can down and grab my shovel.

  "Looks like we might get some weather, so we need to move fast." he adds. The others nod. It takes a little while to pack up, but we're outside soon. I'm glad it's not as bright, but the air smells heavier, like cold and water and a little metal.

  "It's a storm for sure," says Trevor, looking up. "The old knees are getting creaky."

  "Your knees are right," says Eve, "I don't like the look of those clouds."

  "My arm's feeling the same way, too." Russ says. "Let's get going."

  He walks, faster than any of us, and I almost run to catch up. It's hard not to slip on the ice. I don't hear anything, so I keep my shovel down.

  Eve walks next to me, looking a little annoyed.

  "That man," she says to me, looking at Russ. "Is either going to kill himself or us, I don't know which first. He really shouldn't be pushing himself so."

  Russ doesn't say anything, but I think he heard, because he slows down a little. Trevor behind us, huffing and breathing hard and going all red in the face.

  "How far is the next room from here?" Eve asks.

  "15 miles, tops," Trevor pants. "It's shorter, and it's over highway so that it's faster. We don't have any backup if we get caught in a storm, so…"

  "I get the idea." Eve replies.

  We keep walking.

  After a while, white stuff starts falling from the sky. It smells wet and cold, and it makes a tiny fffff noise when it hits the ground. I stop and watch.

  "Denver?" Eve calls.

  I look away. Better catch up.

  Eve laughs when she sees me. "Never seen snow before?" she asks.

  I shake my head. Marcy talks about it from her survival books, but she doesn't seem to like it. Mostly it's stuff about hypothermia and impeded movement and constructed insulated dwelling.

  I like looking at it fall down. It makes me feel happy. I don't know why.

  " ...taking L sledding. Yeah, mom, we'll be back before dark, it's just at deKoevend…"

  "Are you sure you've never seen snow before?" Eve says. "You look like the one time my cousin from Ponce visited for Christmas. Eyes as big as soup pans, he thought it was magic."

  "Yeah." I say. I'm not really paying attention. I'm too busy thinking.

  She keeps talking. "It was so simple back then, not having to worry about- this. All this... coño." she waves her arm at the cars in the street, all the old houses with the windows broken, everything.

  We walk walking. She sighs again.

  "We've all lost something because of the Flu." she says, quietly.

  "Everyone?" I ask.

  She nods. "Trevor… he had a daughter and a granddaughter. The town they were in- it was overrun.

  He couldn't get to them in time. He never even saw the bodies. Russ, he lost Skip."

  "What about you?"

  She pauses. "My husband."

  She smells sad, and I don't think I should ask any more, but she keeps going.

  "I had just come home from work." she says. "When I left, he was so worried about me and the flu, since I worked at the hospital… but I told him it was just a scare, and it would blow over. I kissed him goodbye, and when I came back…"

  She pauses again. "He was gone. Infected, fully. Tried attacking me, I locked myself in the basement, got the shotgun, and…"

  She stops. I smell a tiny bit of saltwater, and the scent of hurt.

  Stupid. I think. I shouldn't have asked...

  "I'm sorry." I say. I don't know what else to, but it feels like I need to say it.

  She gives me a little smile, though it doesn't look happy. "Thank you." she says. "Though you don't need to apologize. It's not like you infected them, but… thank you."

  "Is it..." I start. "Hard? Losing
someone?"

  "Of course. Why wouldn't it be?"

  She pauses. "We all… cope with it differently. It took me awhile to get over Alex, and I still don't think I'm over it, or ever will be. The first weeks were.. .hard." She makes a face like she's in pain. "It was just me, alone, for some time. My town was overrun soon after that, and I tried holding it out in my house. I thought it would be over in a few weeks. But then, they came. The horrible ones."

  She waves her hands. "You know. The mutated ones. The ones that spit acid like fire, or the little laughing ones that ride you like a mule. The ones that jump at you, screaming and clawing-"

  "Leapers?" I ask. My hands and back feel all prickly, suddenly.

  She nods. "We all had our own names for them, when we met, Trevor, Russ, Skip and I. The Savagees, those white crying ones, I called la llorona, after an old child's tale. Trevor would call them Rebeccas, because he said they reminded him of his ex-wife." She snorts.

  "Skip, he had lots of names for them… but I won't tell you, because he cursed like a sailor, that boy.

  Good old Skip…"

  She stops, and thinks some more. "We all started calling them after the names the graffiti said, it was just easier, not as confusing-"

  "Graffiti?"

  "The writing on the walls of the saferooms."

  "Oh."

  "Anyways, after they came, staying in one place became impossible. They just kept attacking, attacking… I thought I was going to die, but I managed to escape in the night over the roof, and get to a saferoom. It was too late for an evac, of course," she says, shaking her head. "So I was pretty much screwed , at least until Skip and Russ found me. They nearly shot me, too, because I looked like la llorona, I was so starved. We picked up Trevor a few days later, hiding in his old squad's firehouse in Fort Wayne. The rest is history. We're going to Charleston, by hook or by crook."

  I think of something. "Why not go to the borders?" I ask. "There's no flu over the river. They have a vaccine."

  Eve shakes her head, laughing softly, but it doesn't sound happy. "It might be zombie free over the Mississippi, kid, but what they have on the West side is much, much worse."

  "What do you mean?"

  She stop waking, and turns to me. "The military! Are you blind? Have you even read the writing on the wall?" She's shaking, angry smelling- almost yelling. "The bodies? Do you even know what they do to us? Survivors? Carriers?"

  "They murder them. Right where they stand."

  Chapter 14

  "Murder?"

  I feel prickly again, not just in my hands, but everywhere- my back, my legs, my head and even my teeth.

  Eve is shaking her head again, and starts walking. The ice goes scrnch under our feet, but I don't pay attention.

  "You don't know?" she asks, while the snow is falling harder, faster, stronger. "Have you ever even seen an evac station? The military, they lined survivors up against the wall- women, children, old men, everyone- and, bang bang," -she made a gun with her fingers- "shot them through their heads. They weren't sick. Well, not in the sense."

  "How?"

  "Carriers. They don't want them spreading it."

  "But don't they have a vaccine?" I ask. Gatling said that they were able to make one…

  Eve laughs again, but it still doesn't sound happy. It's sour, and bitter.

  "You've been listening to the radio too much, haven't you? All those lies that the s oplapollas out there, try and get us to the border so they can take care of us, keep the whole mess quiet? They don't want us talking about the chaos they've caused here, about the infected or the murder or the bombs. No, it's easier to dose us with a bullet and call it a day, not raise a fuss out west. We're dead, anyways," she sighs. "No one over the border even thinks, or knows, that we're alive. It's us, alone.

  No help. No escape, except for over the sea."

  "That's why you're going to Charleston?"

  She nods. "Steal a boat, there's probably a harbor full of them, hopefully they haven't all rotted through. Light out for- well, somewhere that isn't here. Just... away from this mess. Russ is a Michigan man, he used to be a Great Lakes boater. We'll be alright with him, I suppose."

  "So you're following him?"

  She shrugs. "What else can I do? Starve to death in a saferoom? Get tagged by a Trapper in the streets? Going solo… it's suicide. Lone wolves are picked off, easy. Even with just two or three, it's hard. We were struggling after we lost Skip, so when we found you, well…"

  "Oh."

  "Anyways… it's all we can hope for. Maybe, if we're lucky, we won't die."

  "So you trust Russ?"

  She pauses, and seems to think a little.

  "I think he knows what he's doing."

  She pauses again, and adds, quietly:

  "Well, most of the time."

  We've walked a while, and I didn't say anything after I talked with Eve. I'm thinking too much.

  There's more wind, and I have to keep my face down from it. I can't smell much anymore- just cold and ice.

  It's so loud that Eve has to yell to Russ. "How much farther?"

  Russ doesn't stop, but turns and yells back, "Quarter of a mile. We're gonna hit the city soon."

  We walk and walk, and even though it's not long, I feel tired. My stomach is even emptier than before, and I wish I had more than one can of beans to eat.

  The snow keeps getting thicker, and I can't see very well. The others are just dark blobs in the white.

  "Russ!" Trevor yells, right next to me. "I think we're lost!"

  I hear Russ yell back, from far off. "We should be right at the door! The compass doesn't lie!"

  "Are you sure? We should have reached it ages ago!"

  "Just keep walking. We'll hit it any minu-"

  THNK.

  It's a big, metal sound, like someone banging on a door, and it's just ahead.

  "I think I've found it!"

  I hear more banging, and a grrrrrt-SHHHK. The there's a hole of black in the white, which I run towards.

  I almost hit a table when I run in, but it's out of the snow, and the other three are behind me. The wind rattles the doors, and Trevor slams it shut as he comes in.

  "About damn time," Eve mutters. I let my eyes get used to the dark, and I look around the room.

  It's bigger than the last one, but there's no windows except for the one on the door. There's mattresses on the floor, some tables, and…

  "Praise be," whispers Trevor. "They left behind a box of K-rations."

  Russ sighs, but it sounds more happy than sad. "Luck at last."

  I don't listen while they talk and unpack. I just hear the walls creak in the wind, and look through the window at the snow outside. All, white, and all cold.

  And familiar.

  Russ and me take the second watch.

  He doesn't look at me, or talk, for the first hour. Sometimes he'll grunt, but he just stares at the door.

  I listen to the wind rattle the door.

  Sometimes the snow will fall off the roof and go thfmp on the ground. I'll jump a little, and he'll raise his gun, until we find out it was just some snow.

  After awhile he coughs, and looks at me for the first time.

  "So you've survived the first couple of days."

  I tense, and it feels like my breath is clogging up in my throat.

  I nod, because it's all that I can do.

  "What are you hiding?"

  I swallow, and the lump in my throat gets a little smaller. "What do you mean?"

  "How could you survive out there that long? Without a weapon, anything. You can't run forever."

  "I didn't."

  "Then how?"

  "I…"

  I think. Just for a moment, but it feels longer. I'm not sure if I can lie…

  But I can tell the truth.

  Sort of.

  "I...hid. There was a bunker, and in the start I stayed there. I didn't know what was going on, but it was just me and Ma- some other woman. I was i
n there awhile and… the military came. We were in Maine and the military came. I was… on a plane, being evacuated, I think, but something, uh, happened to the pilot and the plane crashed. I don't know where it was, but I hid a lot. Um… there weren't lots of infected. I hid in closets a lot. Then Eve and Trevor found me."

  Russ is quiet for some time. "So that's it."

  "...Um. Yeah." I can't think of anything else to say that might be a lie.

  "And you decided to join us because…?"

  I stop. I don't know how to answer, because I really don't know why.

  Well, they know how to get to Savannah. That's why. But I think Russ might not believe that one.

  "Safety. Until I get to Georgia." That's probably OK to say.

  "Then what?"

  Find Whitaker, I think. I don't know if he'll react the same as Eve and Trevor did.

  "Find help."

  "In Georgia?"

  "It's the only place I think I can find it."

  He just shrugs. "Whatever floats your boat."

  I relax a little until he turns to me again. "Don't think you're off the hook. I'm still watching you." He narrows his eyes.

  I just stare at the door.

  It's a long night.

  Chapter 15

  It was a long night.

  Well, I'll assume it was night. They turned off the fluorescent lights at some designated time so I could get my theoretical beauty/blood replenishment sleep, but, really, when you're wrestling with resentment, generalized despair and utter rage, sleep don't come easy.

  And I wasn't alone.

  I'd started to see glimpses of him, about a week ago. They were just flashes, mere suggestions of shadow in the corner of my eye that vanished as soon as I'd turned around. Little whispers at the edge of my hearing, little suggestions that crept into my head that I'd think that were mine, but didn't have the same voice as mine.

  Within a few days, the flashes stayed longer. Became more solid. Until they somehow became the man sitting on my bed.

  Old army jacket, that used to be mine before it was taken away. A flannel shirt and winter hat that was long worn and stained with sweat and probably some sort of animal viscera. Duck boots and camo pants. Salt and pepper brown hair and a bushy ol' beard and mustache. Blue eyes that were looking mournful and stern, all at once. Crossed arms.

  I took a breath before speaking.

  "Hello, Dad."