by Blake, Misti
She captured a zombie once, about two years ago, and brought it to the office building we were hiding out at. Our horror was unimaginable to be sleeping and get woken up by the distinct shuffling of a zombie walking through the floor we were on. We awoke, startled, and reached for our knives only to find a zombie wrapped up in a bed sheet being coaxed over to us by this insane twenty-three year old woman. All she could say was ‘Good, you’re awake. Watch this’ as she shined her flashlight into the zombie’s face. He paused in his hunt of her for a moment, raising his nose to sniff out the air, before stumbling around like he was drunk. She started to talk to him, letting him hone in on her voice, and led him to run into one of the walls. Knowing that she had proved her point, she deftly pulled out one of her many daggers and delivered the death blow to the back of his head. Scared as we were by her disregard to our safety, we couldn’t believe our luck with this news. We could safely move about in the daylight. The only thing Brantley could say was ‘you just had to kill that thing in here, didn’t you?’ I agreed with him, but I’d never tell her that. After all, this was our living space and now there was a zombie dead within it and the blood stained the floor.
Brantley was the first one I secretly hoped would fall victim to the outbreak. I still hope for that now, although I might just kill him myself before it’s over with. I would often catch him pulling my sister over to the side every chance he thought he wasn’t being watched. His explanation was that he had lost his sister ten years ago when she was the same age as Samantha, but I couldn’t believe he was doing it because he missed his sister. A brother, and someone that was supposed to be harmless, wouldn’t touch a child’s arm the way he would touch Samantha’s. Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t caress a child’s arm with their fingertips as they whispered in hushed tones. I brought my concerns to my father a year ago and Samantha stopped going around the creep. He developed such a horrible attitude when that happened that no one really wanted to be around him. That in itself proved what I knew in my heart to be true.
How we survived this long with two people like Reagan and Brantley, I’ll never know. How we survived at all is something that I’ll never understand. One thing I do know: had my dad died four years ago instead of my step mom, Samantha and I wouldn’t be here. I chalk our luck up to the fact that my dad was a ranger and it taught him so much over the few years he worked as one. My step mom would’ve shut down had the game been reversed and Samantha and I would’ve fallen victim not long after the outbreak. We would’ve been a part of the problem instead of a possible solution to it. Perhaps it would’ve only taken a few months after the outbreak. I’m not saying that I’m glad she’s gone because I’m not. All I’m saying is that my dad being here with us was our saving grace.
Her loss still takes its toll on him even now. I can see him suffering internally and I have a theory about what keeps running through his head daily. I know he regrets every decision he made that led us to her doom. I know he thinks about how much easier it would be if we were where she’s been. And I can see that he’s lost his faith over the years. Before the outbreak, he was a devout Christian, but it was clear that this virus has broken him. He keeps saying she’s in a better place, but keeps questioning why his children aren’t; why Samantha isn’t. I know he tries his hardest to hold onto the last shred of faith he has left, but he’s crumbling. Now he’s only half the man he used to be, or so he claims. His only motivation to get up and keep going now is his children that are dependent upon him for everything. He couldn’t leave us to fend for ourselves.
Poor Samantha… She hasn’t spoken much since she witnessed her mother being beaten. She sits by herself in her own little world playing with the little baby dolls we had found for her over the years in abandoned buildings. One of them she favored the most: a little doll with tight, blonde curls and brown eyes just like her mother. We went through a great deal to get that one for her. I closed my eyes as I thought back on that moment in time. She had seen the doll sitting in one of the windows we passed by on our search for a new place to live. She cried for it until our dad stopped the car so we could retrieve it. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the building, a small retail store, was swarming with undead creatures. They had been hiding out toward the back of the place where the light from the window couldn’t reach. We fought for our lives, almost losing my dad in the process. We were surrounded at one point, but managed to stay on top of the fight and defeat the zombies. It wasn’t worth risking our lives for, but it pained me to see her hug and kiss on it knowing she longed for what was taken from her.
She had shut everyone out, including our dad. The only thing she cared about anymore was keeping that doll by her side. That first year, she had lost a significant amount of weight and had started looking like the beasts that hunted us down. She got so sick that I ended up having to force feed her anything she would keep down. We feared that she wouldn’t make it, but she did. Now, at ten years old, she has become independent. A tiny, little adult with her own needs and wants to satisfy. Something about all this turns even the softest people to hardened fighters.
Once we had moved locations to a hotel a few blocks down from the library in New York, Samantha spent her afternoons playing with dolls while I spent mine out on the balcony of our room. I would observe everything that happened below us on the streets. When the outbreak first occurred, the zombies would hibernate during the day. I guess because there were plenty of normal people left that they didn’t need to stay on the move to eat. Now with our kind’s numbers dwindling rapidly, zombies are out all day and all night scavenging. They would comb every building that they could get into. Cars weren’t safe and God forbid you were located by even one of them. Within seconds, a swarm would surround you. They would stop at nothing to get to their next meal. The most shocking part was that some had turned to eating one another just to be able to eat something.
Many times I’ve laid there on that balcony and watched as one zombie ate another. It’s horrific, but it gives me hope that we could survive this. I’ve learned that they can eat each other, but it also kills them from the inside out. It was almost as if eating their own kind was a poison for them. I’ve watched the same zombie eat others over and over just to see how sick it made her. She would be fine for three hours or up to three days before spewing black ooze through her mouth from her stomach. It didn’t matter how much she ate, it would always end the same. The first time I saw it, my stomach turned in circles and I threw up along with her.
She did this for a month, every time the sickness got worse and worse, before she fell over and never got back up. The next morning, while the sun hung high in the sky, I went out to check on her to see why she wasn’t moving any longer. Her corpse was beyond disgusting. She had already started decaying beyond the point of recognition despite the fact that it had only been about twelve hours that passed between her going down and me checking on her. Her exterior layer of skin had completely dissolved away, leaving behind gray muscles and tendons in its absence. This probably wasn’t something that the Russians and Germans had in mind when they designed this, but it was the answer to mankind’s salvation. They were going to destroy themselves eventually. We just had to wait it out.
It was easy to tell that it might not be much longer until they all started feeding on each other. More and more of them were doing it now. It wasn’t uncommon to see a group devouring a single corpse. No matter the security that their predicament gave me, it created a horrible consequence. The city was starting to fill with a worse stench than rotting corpses: the stench of the corpses after being digested in the stomachs of their own kind. At times like this, I couldn’t help but to wonder how we were going to get that smell out of the city once the zombies were gone and we reclaimed it again. It would probably take a ton of bleach and water hoses to get the job done.
It started to get darker out, but I waited around to see our other salvation: the blue light. Not long after the outbreak, a blue beam of light began to light t
he night sky. It was coming from somewhere on the other side of the city out in the country. I wasn’t sure of its origins, but what I do know is that it’s saved us more than once. It was so bright that it illuminated the entire sky over New York, turning it a pale blue color. It was brighter than the moon’s beams shining down on the city and offered us a sanctuary; a way to survive when we were most vulnerable. At first I thought it was to help us see so we wouldn’t be taken by surprise, but when we learned of the zombie’s blindness in light, I knew that was why it was designed. Someone was out there and had learned the secret to surviving before we had and they wanted to help us live.
I’ve tried for years to convince my dad to seek these people out. I was sure that we could find them without much of a problem now. The herds of zombies were thinning out in the city. Some had gone on to other places while others simply hid away within the darkest alleys and corners. They were growing too weak to do much to us now. If we wanted to be safe, now was our chance to make a break for it. He just didn’t see it my way on this. He felt that we could wait it out here in this hotel another four years and be fine. He thinks it’ll all be over by then. The rest of the group felt mixed about it, too. Reagan loved my idea, which wasn’t surprising. She wanted the chance to kick some zombie ass instead of being held up here much longer. Brantley sided with my father on the issue. He felt it was too risky to make a break for it. Finding food was hard enough in his opinion.
They discussed it every night when the light would cover the sky. It was a constant push for some to convince the others we needed to leave here, but Reagan was just more vocal about it than I was. I think she loved questioning my dad’s leadership and knowledge. Almost as though she was trying to see how far she could push until he’d back down and let her take over. I knew that she’d be in for the long haul despite her efforts. My father was a hard one to get to crack.
Sure enough, once the sun went down and that beautiful blue color filled the streets, the arguing started within the walls of the hotel room. “We are not going to leave this damn place until this is all OVER!” my dad yelled. It had happened so often that I could picture his face in my head in that moment. Bright red with fuming eyes and his teeth gritted together. It was a scene that I had seen many times. He was a bit of a hothead when people continuously defied him or disbelieved him. He used to have a bad reputation back home for beating a neighbor to the brink of death. Had he not been a steeple of the community, and the neighbor hadn’t been a child molester, he would’ve been thrown in prison for about five years, maybe longer had he not stopped when he did.
“I don’t see why you won’t go! It could be safer than here! Someone has to be there to turn the damn thing on!” Reagan shouted louder. Her expression would be one of amusement mixed with anger at his stupidity. I’ve had to watch them for so long that I didn’t even need to be in there to know how they glared at one another right now. I knew beforehand what would be said because it was always the same. You’d think that after so long, they would come up with a new argument or just stop it altogether, but the rest of us weren’t that lucky.
“It’s not happening! My children will not leave the safety of this hotel so long as there is ONE zombie left in this God-forsaken city!”
“Your daughter is the one who suggested it in the first place! Don’t you think she’s smart enough to make these types of decisions for herself?! Or old enough?! After all, she’s the one who observed these things more than the rest of us have!” This would be where my dad would turn a brighter shade of red at the mentioning of my idea. He couldn’t stand having me thrown up in his face or that I even watched those things enough to realize their movements.
“You’re right. She’s smart enough and knows enough, but she’s still my daughter and always will be. We’re not leaving! Go to your death if that’s what you want, but don’t you dare bring my children in on it!” My dad would probably be crossing his arms over his chest right about now with a satisfied look painted on his face. He knew she wouldn’t leave the group alone. She wanted an extra set of eyes with her at all times, no excuses. For someone so daring, she sure was paranoid about being alone in this world, unless she was on her motorcycle. It was the only thing we knew of that separated her from the undead. Otherwise, she was just as cold-hearted and dead as the things that pursued us.
“No, no. We go as a group or not at all,” Reagan replied in a defeated tone. She more than likely had that pout of hers going on. The kind that made you feel guilty for telling her no on something. She had a habit of using that face when she didn’t get her way. I smiled to myself knowing she hated to be at the mercy of others. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she hated the idea of being alone in this world. I felt that she might not be as confident in herself as she put off.
Four years with these people and we still didn’t know them well. We figured out majority of what we knew by the way that they acted or the way that they dressed, but for the most part they were still total strangers to us. And yet, we all depended on one another for survival, even those who tried to pretend otherwise. No matter what we had to do, we were always there for one another in times of need. Ill tempers aside, we had made an almost unbreakable connection with one another.
I pulled my blanket tighter around me and lay back down on the plush rug that used to be in the kitchen when we first got here. It’s soft, furry texture made me think of my rug back home. It helped me to feel more at ease and comfortable with my current situation. I could lie on my side and watch the zombies stir from their sleep and go in search of food. They would go in and out of buildings, look under cars, and check any basements they could find for one scrap of flesh. Some would stand there and pick the rotting skin off of their own bodies just to be able to eat something. I always felt like I was in a horror movie that didn’t end and the directors had run out of ideas for the story to continue. Everyone, including us when we went out for supplies, just shuffled around aimlessly, looking for something they may never find. Well, they would find it if they would come past our barrier of rotting zombie corpses.
We figured out quickly that the smell of their own kind rotting away deterred them from certain spots, especially if there were many of them gathered together there. They absolutely refused to enter a graveyard for the smell alone. So when we found this place last year, we immediately started piling up dead zombies as we killed them or picked them up off the ground. We hung them in front of windows, sat them around the doorways, and made a circle with them around the emergency escape out back. This prevented any others from coming in; they hated too much of their own stench. We just had to keep adding to the pile sometimes as they decomposed much faster than a live zombie, or even a person for that matter. It only took two weeks before they were nothing but bones in a pile of clothes.
I hoped often that someone somewhere was studying these types of phenomenon. It would be a complete shame if they weren’t. I could go down in history for figuring out the things I have already if we were all that was left. I had to laugh at myself for that thought. If the human race survived our extinction, books and history would be far from anyone’s minds. We would all be running and screaming through the streets, taking long showers in hot water again, having sex with the most attractive person we could find, and playing on playgrounds. We would rejoice and cry with one another before cleaning up our beloved planet. I could see it in my head as clear as day.
Samantha would come out of her shell once more and go back to how she used to be; carefree and happy. But I’m not naïve… I know she’ll come away with scars, but at least she won’t wonder when her last day will be. My dad would go back to the jolly old ranger he used to be, or so I hoped. We would pick up the broken pieces of our family together and we would move forward with our lives. We would finally part ways with Reagan and Brantley for good without a moment’s thought about them. It would be wrong to have their bad attitudes ruining the rest of our lives. Life would go back to resembling what it on
ce was, although lacking the overcrowding issue. No more starving families. No more fights… The only other difference was there would be a lack of an education for me. My dream had died with the people of this planet.
I caught myself contemplating what would happen to Reagan for a moment. Knowing her, she’d find someone, piss them off, and get herself murdered. Her influence upon this earth would be extinguished forever. I hoped for a moment’s time that she wouldn’t be so idiotic as to do that, but I knew it was foolish. She was the closest thing I had to a friend over the years and to know how she’d met her doom… I shook my head, trying to fight the thoughts and feelings that surged through me. She was the type of person that I could never be: cocky, ignorant, stubborn, snarky, daring… But she was gorgeous with her auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, bangs framing her face, her ever-rosy cheeks, and full lips…
OK! Being stuck around the same five people for so long was turning me into something that I wasn’t. I needed to find a good stock of depression or psychosis medicines before it was too late and I did something I would regret and never forget. There had to be a man out there somewhere that was decent compared to what I’ve been around. This wasn’t all I would know until I died or the world became right again. I have not and never will be a lesbian if I had to kill myself before I allowed the temptation to take over! I would break not only my dad’s heart, but also my own.
I rolled over to face the door to the balcony and conjured up images of the end of the apocalypse before sleep. I found pure solace in the idea that I might live to see the end of it all. I thought about how I would go to the park to see the trees and the flowers in the spring with Samantha next year. The colors of the flowers would range from yellow to red to purple and line the gates within the park. Even though the grass would be overgrown, it would still be a breath-taking sight. I dreamt of how I would hunt through the city for some bicycles that weren’t chained up to ride with my family through the streets on sunny days. I imagined being able to enjoy the fall leaves gently falling down all around me once again as I walked through the park and finally tasting a fire-cooked pizza that I longed for as much as a hot shower. I would find some gas somewhere and hotwire a boat once I learned how; just so I could go deep sea fishing or swimming in the channel. I smiled as I thought about sunbathing on the bow of a boat in the harbor wearing the first bathing suit I could find in a store that would fit me. The final thought that flashed through my mind before I welcomed the dark folds of sleep was Reagan sunbathing beside me in the most flattering bathing suit that looked like it was a size too small. Resting on her elbows with her head tilted back and one knee bent up to the sky, she glowed under the sunlight like a blooming lily caught in the first morning sunrise after a long, hard winter.
