Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 5)

by Mortimer, L. C.

  He heard Torrance’s footsteps pounding behind him and he ran faster. He had to get to the door, had to let Mark inside.

  “Stop!” She yelled before he reached the bottom of the stairs, but he didn’t stop. This was Mark. This was Alice. Kyle had to get to them. He kept running. He was almost to the door, almost to the place where his friends were. He was close to getting them.

  Then he hit the floor.

  “Fuck,” he groaned. His head hurt. His knees. His damn elbow. “You tackled me.” He couldn’t believe she’d done it, but then Torrance covered his mouth with her hand and Kyle stopped talking.

  “There’s a fucking horde out there, Kyle,” she whispered. Her voice was low. Her eyes were on the door. She wasn’t looking at him now, or at all, really. She was watching the door, and Kyle’s eyes followed her.

  Through the glass windows beside the front doors, he could see them. Body-to-body, the zombies had come. They were standing on the porch and they were starting to reach for the door. Their hands snaked out like tentacles from their body; their moans reached his ears.

  Kyle didn’t say anything. Suddenly, he wished he had on more clothes than just his shoes and boxers. Suddenly, he wished he had a weapon. Suddenly, he wished he was back in the library, back in the comfort of the cozy chair on the first floor. He wished he was reading a damn book.

  He didn’t want to be here.

  “Move slowly,” Torrance whispered, and took his hand. She helped him to his feet and they backed up slowly. The Infected hadn’t seemed to notice there were humans inside. They hadn’t seemed to notice there was live prey.

  Would that give them extra time to escape?

  Would that give them a way to get away?

  The creatures were pressing their bodies to the windows. They were pushing on the door. Their fists hit the sides of the building and the walls began to shake. The zombies didn’t seem to be in a rush, but they seemed suddenly powerful.

  Kyle’s heart was beating so hard he was sure Torrance could hear it.

  “I almost let them in,” he realized.

  “But you didn’t,” she said, and she squeezed his hand. “Now shut up, Kyle. We have to go.” She took his hand and ran upstairs to the second floor, ran back into the room she’d been living in. She grabbed a black backpack and slung it over her shoulders, picked up two crowbars, then motioned for him to follow her.

  He wished he had a shirt to wear. He suddenly felt very vulnerable.

  It would only take a scratch.

  It would only take one little mistake and that would be it. Torrance would put him down. There would be no waiting. There would be no quarantine, no isolation. She would shoot him the second she realized he’d been compromised. She would be harsh, and unwavering, but she would do it quick.

  He could count on that.

  She tossed him one of the crowbars and he caught it, held it tight. It wasn’t much, but it would offer him a chance to defend himself. Suddenly, he was glad he’d had so much practice killing the Infected. His earlier murderous spree would pay off if he had to kill something with the crowbar. Kyle pushed the thought from his mind and focused on following Torrance.

  Torrance knew her way around the building. She moved swiftly, quietly. Kyle hurried to keep up with her and hoped they had moved fast enough. He could hear the Infected at the doors now. Their moans and banging rang throughout the building.

  “Don’t think about it,” she said.

  “I’m not,” he lied.

  “If you think about it, we’re just going to slow down. We need to move.”

  He didn’t say anything else because there really wasn’t anything to say. They went down to the first floor and then down another set of stairs. Torrance fished a flashlight out of her backpack and turned it on.

  “There’s another exit,” she said. “We shouldn’t stay here.” They reached the bottom of the stairs. They were in a basement hallway. She turned left, toward the back of the building.

  “Agreed,” Kyle said. “They’ll break the doors down soon. Looks like there’s a lot of them. You sure it’s clear down here?” She walked ahead with the light and he stayed close. He tried to look around as much as possible, but that wasn’t very much.

  “I cleared it the first day. There were a couple of them down here.”

  “What did you do with the bodies?” He asked, but he spoke too soon. Almost immediately, the smell of death reached his nostrils and he fought back the urge to gag.

  Torrance did not.

  She knelt over and started puking in front of him on the musty floor. He reached for her hair and held it back from her face until she was finished. Then she stood up.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, obviously embarrassed. “They were too heavy to move. I shouldn’t have left them. It was stupid.”

  “Not your fault. You did your best.”

  His words hung in the air and she nodded. Then they kept walking down the hallway, careful to step around the bodies. She had pushed them to the side. Kyle peeked as they walked. It was two old women. She’d hit them in the head, hit them where it counted, and he wondered how hard it had been for her.

  Torrance was strong, but killing a zombie that looked like a grandmother couldn’t have been easy.

  They moved down the hallway. They could hear the Infected at the front doors of the building. They were still banging, still hitting the wooden doors. Then Kyle heard the sound of glass shattering.

  “Welcome home, boys,” Torrance muttered, but she didn’t hurry. Kyle peeked over his shoulder, but he couldn’t see anything behind them in the dark. When the Infected entered the upstairs lobby, it would take them awhile to make their way through the building. Hopefully, by the time they reached the basement, he and Torrance would be long gone.

  The smell of mold and mildew invaded his nostrils and he was glad he’d taken the inhaler not too long before. He hoped Torrance still had it in her pocket, but he didn’t want to ask. They wouldn’t be able to go back if she didn’t and he didn’t want to get his hopes up.

  He followed her down the hallway quickly. They rounded a bend and she flicked the flashlight toward a small, narrow staircase.

  “This leads outside,” she whispered. “When we get out, follow me. Can you run?”

  “I can run.”

  “Then we’ll run,” she said. She took a deep breath. Suddenly, Torrance looked nervous. Her face had gone white and Kyle remembered she hadn’t been outside in days. This was where she’d been living, where she’d been hiding. This place had been her sanctuary.

  “Hey,” he said. “We’re going to be fine.”

  “Yeah,” she nodded. “We’ll be fine.”

  They were both lying, but they both knew it.

  Torrance shut off the flashlight, put it in her bag, and opened the door.

  Chapter 4

  Torrance and Kyle stepped into the fading sunlight. Darkness was coming. They needed to find shelter. Fast. She peeked quietly out the door. She didn’t see any zombies at the back of the building. Luck, she thought. It was luck. They wouldn’t be far behind them.

  She knew it would take them awhile to get through the building, but fuck, there were just so damn many. She’d never be able to go back into the offices here, never be able to go back for anything she might have forgotten.

  That didn’t matter.

  She’d gotten the important stuff.

  Now she had to guide Kyle to a safe place, a haven, a refuge. The only problem was that there wasn’t one and there was no time to search for something good. She thought she wasn’t going to have to run for awhile, but she’d been wrong.

  And so had Kyle.

  She felt bad for the poor guy. He and his friends had wanted to settle in Raven, at least for a little while. She could tell. None of them could catch a break. It was one bad day after another and Torrance was tired.

  She could tell he was, too.

  She looked anxiously back and forth. Mark and Alice probably ran left, tow
ard the houses. It would be the natural way to go. After all, no one wanted to run toward a lake when there were zombies chasing them. Maybe Mark and Alice didn’t know about the lake, though. Maybe they hadn’t seen it yet. The lake was nestled behind the woods and while Torrance and Kyle had had a clear view of it from the balcony, Mark and Alice wouldn’t have been able to see it from the front of the building or from the library.

  If Mark and Alice had gone left, the Infected had followed them. It was a sure thing, a done deal. There was no question. The Infected had seen them and at least some of the monsters would have followed them.

  “On the other side of the lake,” she whispered to Kyle. “There are some cabins.”

  “Abandoned?”

  “I think so. Used to be a campsite for families,” she said. “Should we give it a shot?”

  They didn’t have many options. She felt like there were none. They could try to find a car and get the hell out of town, but she knew Kyle wouldn’t leave his friends, and she didn’t want to leave him behind to wait for them.

  Not that she owed him anything.

  She didn’t.

  He was a good person, though, and it would feel wrong to leave him behind.

  “How do we get there?” He was whispering, too, and she closed the door to the building behind them. They could still hear the Infected groaning on the other side of the building. There would be more between Torrance, Kyle, and the lake. Maybe there would only be a few.

  Torrance and Kyle would have to go through the woods to get to the water, then they could walk around the lake to the cabins. They’d stay out of the forest, stay close to the lake. That would give them a sort of barrier. Nothing could come out of the water to get them. They’d only have to watch three sides for safety instead of four.

  It was small, but it was something.

  She pointed toward a narrow path that led into the forest.

  “Let’s go, Kyle,” she took his hand and they started walking. They didn’t run, even though she had said they were going to. There were too many leaves on the ground back here, too many things they could trip over. The risk of making noise was too great.

  Torrance didn’t want to draw any more attention to themselves.

  She hated that their tiny haven had been taken over by a swarm of fucking zombies. Hated it. She hated knowing the Infected, while stupid as fuck, had so much power over her.

  Torrance didn’t like to feel powerless.

  She had felt it so much lately. She had lost her son and now the only place she had thought of to hide. She was weak and she was useless and now she really did have nothing.

  Kyle held her hand as they walked, though, and that planted a thought in her head: she didn’t have nothing. She had a friend.

  How long had it been since Torrance had a friend she could count on?

  How long had it been since she had someone to take care of her?

  To help her?

  To be there for her?

  She couldn’t even remember.

  Brandon’s dad had left shortly after she gave birth. She’d raised her son on her own. Her parents hadn’t been thrilled or even accepting of the fact that she was going to be a mother, and they’d disowned her.

  That was fine.

  She did all right on her own.

  She worked and took care of her son alone. No one helped her and she didn’t ask for handouts. That wasn’t her style. Torrance was more interested in making sure Brandon had a good life than in asking people for freebies.

  Maybe she should have stopped being so prideful and just asked for help.

  Maybe then she’d still have a kid.

  Maybe then she’d have a place to hide.

  Kyle and Torrance reached the edge of the woods.

  “It’s dark,” he said. “But no flashlight. We don’t want to risk being seen.”

  “No flashlight,” she agreed.

  They stepped into the darkness and their pace slowed even more. If they didn’t pick it up, they wouldn’t have to worry about the zombies finding them: they’d die of old age long before they reached the edge of the lake.

  Torrance fought the urge to run with the desire to be safe. All it took was one wrong turn, one wrong step, and they could get seriously injured. If Kyle twisted his ankle or if she hurt her knee, what would they do?

  They couldn’t exactly call for help.

  She wondered if he’d kill her, but then she pushed the thought from her head. She didn’t want to think he was capable of that, but she knew he probably was. They all probably were. That was the type of thing you tried not to think about because you wouldn’t like the answers you found.

  Fading strips of light peeked through the treetops and allowed Torrance and Kyle to find their way through the woods. They were almost completely silent as they moved, yet every footstep seemed to echo.

  She could still hear the groans from the zombies at the building they’d vacated.

  Had they found the basement yet?

  Had they wandered out the back door yet?

  “Here we are,” Kyle said suddenly, and she realized they’d reached the edge of the lake. She looked out at the glistening water. The sun had set almost completely now. The moon was out and the stars were bright. She kind of hated them for shining so much when Torrance felt so dark on the inside.

  Brandon had loved the moonlight. They’d gone outside so many nights, spread a blanket on the ground, and counted stars until it was long past his bedtime.

  She missed those easy, carefree days.

  “Watch your back,” Kyle said quickly, and Torrance moved before a wandering Infected could grab her. Kyle lifted his crowbar and swung, hitting the creature with perfect accuracy. The body fell to the ground and Kyle looked at Torrance.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “That was close,” he said.

  “Too close.”

  “Where do we go now?”

  She turned and pointed across the lake. They could see one of the little cabins that was close to the water’s edge, but the rest were nestled in the trees.

  “Walk around?” He asked.

  “No,” Torrance pointed. She hadn’t seen it before because she hadn’t wandered through the woods since the infection began. Right there, waiting perfectly for them, was a little canoe. “It’s our lucky day.”

  Chapter 5

  Alice couldn’t bear it much longer. She felt like they’d been in the little shed for hours, days. She felt like she’d been there for months. She was sitting on her butt with her legs pulled to her chest, and her muscles were starting to cramp.

  She wanted to stretch, move.

  She wanted to leave.

  Mark was peering out the front of the shed. She knew he could see the house, but he didn’t want her to come up there. That was fine. The less she moved, the less likely she was to make noise and get them hurt or killed. She understood.

  She still wondered what he was seeing.

  The moans and groans of the zombies as they destroyed the house was scaring the hell out of her. She’d never been this close to so many before. There had been a lot chasing her, but how had they known to stop at this house in particular? Some of them should have kept running, she thought, and maybe some of them had, but it sure seemed like most of them were trying to break down the little home.

  She hoped nobody was inside.

  Wouldn’t that be just perfect?

  Not only would she and Mark have barely escaped certain death, but they would have been responsible for the death of some survivors whose only crime was holing up in the wrong house.

  Mark kept peering out the front of the shed. Despite the darkness, she could tell how tense he was. None of them dealt well with stress. She and Kyle were the worst about it. Alice’s tension manifested in headaches and Kyle’s in asthma attacks, but Mark held his stress close to his heart.

  His stress came out in his nightmares.

  After an eternity, he came back toward her.

>   “What did you see?” She whispered as quietly as she could.

  “They’re tearing down the house.” His voice was equally quiet.

  “Should we make a run for it?”

  “No. They’ll be on us before we can reach the gate. Some of them run now. Some of them are really fucking fast now.”

  “So what do we do, Mark?”

  “We wait. They’ll destroy the house. They’ll go through it.”

  “What if they can smell us out here?”

  “I don’t think they can. I think we’re too far from the house for them to sense us,” but Mark’s voice didn’t sound as certain as his words did. Alice shivered with fear and scooted a little closer to Mark. He put his arm around her and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

  They sat there in silence with only the sounds of breaking glass and splintering wood to keep them company. How long did it take a group of zombies to break into a house? She knew they were inside now. It hadn’t taken long at all. It had been less than ten minutes, she thought. It had been fast.

  When they found a place to stay forever, when they found their perfect survival home, they would need to barricade the doors, block off the windows. Maybe they’d have a second-floor entrance, Alice thought. They really didn’t need to risk anyone coming in the first floor. Climbing ladders wasn’t such a difficult thing. A second-story entrance could be nice, safe.

  Alice could hear the Infected stomping through the little brick house. It was so close to the shed. Too close for comfort. She heard it happening, but suddenly, Alice wanted to see it, too. It wasn’t enough to just listen.

  She squeezed Mark’s hand and slipped out from under his arm. She thought he would pull her back, but he didn’t. He let her go and she was glad. She wasn’t a baby, wasn’t a child that needed to be protected.

  She was grown and she was capable of looking after herself.

  Most days.

  She was scared, but she needed to see this for herself. It wasn’t enough to have Mark tell her what they were doing. She slipped onto her knees and crawled across the dusty floor. Her hand hit something as she moved and she wrapped her fingers around it. Alice felt for a moment until she realized it was a hammer. Good. She held it in her hand. It could be useful. She had the gun in her waistband still, but using it was going to be a last resort.