by Megan Berry
I get just close enough that I should be able to reach the zombie with the long axe handle, without it being able to reach me, and I raise the axe over my head. I take a shaky breath before bringing it down with a disgusting smack. My swing is off because the axe is so heavy, and the curved blade imbeds in the creature’s collarbone by accident. I refuse to think of it as a person, not when I’m hitting it with an axe.
I try to pull the axe out, but I’m getting dangerously close to the swinging arms again. Thankfully, blood doesn’t spray out like I was expecting. Instead, the gross sludge starts leaking slowly from the wound. The zombie doesn’t seem to be affected by the horrible injury and keeps growling and swinging at me. The axe is yanked from my fingers as he unexpectedly jerks to the left. I take a step back just as he manages to tear away from the fence. The zombie starts towards me with his slow, uneven gait. I backpedal fast in blind panic and trip. I fall backwards and land hard on my butt. My teeth snap together and the air is knocked out of me, making my chest hurt. Even worse, the zombie is still coming after me.
He moves quicker than I expect. Within three rapid beats of my heart, he’s on top of me before I can scramble back. The smell of the rotting, putrid skin pressed up against my face would have me gagging if I wasn’t so busy fighting for my life. I can hear his jaws snapping like crazy. The axe handle that’s still protruding from his collar bone is digging painfully into my hip. He’s crushing my legs with the full force of his weight, and I’m forced to put my hands up on his shoulders in an attempt to buck him off, but it’s impossible. He’s huge and immovable.
I let out a ragged cry of terror; my brain is shutting down from fear. Somehow, my hand manages to grab around and find the knife that I tucked in my hoody pocket. I bring the knife up just as the monster opens his mouth and bares his chipped, ragged teeth. He snaps down on the blade and the momentum of his own body weight pushes the knife further into his skull. My arms tremble with the strain of trying to hold him up, but adrenaline has given me an added boost of strength.
I hear the horrible death rattle in his throat, and then he’s dead weight, unmovable and unmoving as he collapses on top of me. My arms bend under his weight, and I begin to scream in terror and buck harder. Thankfully, he’s pulled off of me a second later. I scrabble to my feet, slipping in the gore, and see Ryan standing over me. He’s the one that pulled the zombie off me. He’s puffing and out of breath from running across the yard. Even though I’m covered from my boobs down in zombie viscera, he pulls me into a tight hug.
“Did you get bit?” his voice is filled with tension, and I have to do a mental check before I am able to truthfully shake my head.
“No,” I manage to get out before I burst into tears.
Ryan scoops me up in his arms and carries me, sobbing, into the house. I didn’t notice at first, but Abby had run over with him when the zombie got loose. She follows him back to the house.
“Take her upstairs and get her cleaned up,” he asks Abby, gently setting me down.
“Megan and I will take care of him,” he motions towards the guy still sitting on the porch.
My legs feel like they’re made out of jelly. Abby grabs my hand, despite the gore, and it makes me feel a bit more stable.
We go back up to the bedroom we stayed in the night before, and Abby leads me to the bathroom. I have no qualms about stripping down and getting underneath the icy cold blast of the shower this time. The water makes me feel like I want to jump out of my own skin, it torments me, like tiny pin pricks of ice driving into my naked, shivering body, but I don’t relent. I scrub myself from head to toe until I’m sore and pink. I’m tempted to find a bottle of bleach, but I limit myself to a fourth scrubbing instead.
Abby is waiting with a fluffy towel when I get out. She wraps me up and leads me over to the bed, shoving me under the covers to warm up. My teeth are chattering so hard I can’t even thank her. Abby sits down and rests her arm on me.
“I was so scared I was going to lose you Jane,” her voice sounds raw with emotion. She’s close to tears, which makes my own tears, still dangerously close to the surface, start to twinge.
“I can’t lose another person I love.”
Her words sober me even more. I don’t want to die, but who can predict who gets to live in this crazy world these days. I reach out and squeeze her hand, not saying anything more because I can’t make that promise.
I start to warm up a bit. When I finally stop shaking, Abby brings me some extra clothes from the closet. She gives me a bit of privacy, and I shimmy into the warm grey sweat pants, plain white t-shirt, and zip-up hoodie that she’s provided. So much for the mom jeans lasting me until we get to the lake.
I’m starting to perk up a bit by the time Abby and Megan pop their heads back into the room to check on me.
“You had us pretty worried,” Megan admits, and I know she probably feels bad for goading me earlier.
“I had myself pretty worried,” I admit to them. They both look grim as they remember how close I had come.
“What’s going on with that guy?” I ask to change the subject, and Megan shakes her head.
“He’s sick or something. I guess he’s the son of the people we found. He’s been feeding dead chickens to that zombie you killed in the bedroom.” She shakes her head like she thinks he’s completely nuts.
I feel a prick of guilt. It might be crazy to keep your zombie father locked up and feed him chickens that you strangled yourself, but I can kind of see why someone might.
“He seems harmless enough, but Ryan is concerned about what’s making him sick,” Megan says, interrupting my dark thoughts.
“I want to go downstairs,” I say, pulling myself up from the bed.
Megan and Abby frown.
“Are you sure you’re up for it?” Abby asks, and I nod emphatically.
“I’m not sick, and I didn’t get hurt, just shook up,” I look her right in the eye to show that I’m fine. “Sitting in this room only makes me think about it more. I need something to do…maybe I can help that guy somehow.”
“Kyle,” Megan chimes in.
We both look at her blankly.
“His name is Kyle,” She explains.
“Alright, I want to go help Ryan and Kyle,” I rephrase.
“Jane and Ryan sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!” Megan starts singing. My jaw literally drops; I’m shocked that she would even say something like that in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
“Shut up.” I tell her, though I’m not really mad.
“He doesn’t look at either of us the way he looks at you,” Abby chimes in her own two cents.
“Now you’re on her side?” I demand, to cover up the fact that my face has turned pink.
Abby grins, “Don’t worry, it’s cute.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie, which is not really a lie. With everything going on, I haven’t thought much about Ryan in that way.
Abby and Megan grin, and I make a show of leaving the room in a huff, though really it’s kind of nice to revert back to something that was normal before all this madness started.
I enter the room, and Ryan looks up at me with concern on his face.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod, making Megan and Abby giggle behind me. I blatantly ignore them, and Ryan, and head over to look at the guy curled up on the couch with a blanket wrapped around him. He’s white and shaking like a leaf.
“Are you the one that killed my Dad?” he asks around chattering teeth, and my stomach does a nervous flip. I hadn’t been expecting that question.
“Yes,” I admit after a minute of strained silence. I hold my breath, waiting for his anger.
He nods sadly, “Thanks.”
I blink, I definitely hadn’t been expecting that!
“I couldn’t do it…but I’m glad he isn’t suffering anymore.”
Tears well up in my eyes, and I reach down and grasp his hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I
see Ryan edging closer in concern. I look up at him and shake my head; the guy is pretty sick, I’m not sure what he could really do to me in this state.
“My name is Jane,” I tell him as I put a palm to his forehead, he’s burning up.
“K…Kyle,” he manages to get out around his shivering.
“Were you bitten?” I ask in concern. I’ve never seen anyone change, but it seems like suspicious timing to be this sick if it’s not connected.
Kyle shakes his head. “Not bitten, but Dad did scratch me yesterday.”
I nod like that’s perfectly natural but look at Ryan over his head. Ryan’s eyebrows are furrowed in concern, and he shrugs at me helplessly.
“Let me get you a cup of water,” I offer and slowly let go of Kyle’s hand, pulling the blanket up a bit more as I stand.
I walk over to where the rest of the group is sitting, and Abby holds up a bottle of hand sanitizer.
“Just in case,” she murmurs when I give her a look.
“Do you think he’s turning?” I ask, though none of us girls have ever seen anyone actually change before. All eyes turn to Ryan to see if he has any nuggets of wisdom on the subject.
Ryan looks grim. “It looks like it,” he confirms, and I feel so sad for Kyle.
“Are you sure?” I ask, not that I think he’s lying, but I just don’t want to believe it.
“Not completely,” he surprises us by admitting.
“I’ve seen people turn from bites before, but I don’t know if a scratch does the same thing. He is getting sick like the others did, but…I can’t be sure.”
“The news only warned about bites from the infected,” Abby agrees with him.
“I think he’s going to turn, and we will be at risk of getting bitten. We should leave,” Megan surprises me by saying.
“Megan…,” I start to speak, but she interrupts me.
“I know what you’re going to say, and yeah, it isn’t nice, but this is the world we live in now. Staying risks us getting infected, it delays us another day getting to the cabin, and we don’t even know this guy.”
We are all silent for a long time after she says that. Part of me knows she is right, but the part that is still me underneath all the horror and trauma of the last few days refuses to do something like that to another human being.
“We don’t know for sure he will turn. He might be fighting off an infection,” I disagree with her.
“I think we should stay,” Ryan agrees with me. “It’s the right thing to do, and we’ve already burned half a day’s travel anyway. We wouldn’t get too far before we’d have to stop for the night, at least we know this place is secure.”
Megan’s lip curls up at his words.
“Of course you’d side with her,” she snaps, making me angry.
“It’s how I feel Megan,” Ryan replies, far more calm than I would be if I were to open my mouth right now.
“I agree with Jane and Ryan, too,” Abby chimes in, breaking the tie.
“Fine!” Megan snaps, walking over to the boxes still stacked by the door. She grabs the box of garbage bags that need to go back over the windows.
We watch her storm off, all of us feeling a little uneasy with our decision.
I bring Kyle a glass of water, and I’m surprised to see he’s stopped shaking.
“Are you feeling better?” I ask, and Kyle nods.
“I think so…,” is all he gets out before he starts to vomit. I jump back just in time. I’m horrified to see that what he’s throwing up isn’t last night’s dinner, its blood, and lots of it.
Abby is on the ball and shoves a bucket under his head. The three of us stand back and watch it fill with blood.
“I think he’s infected,” Ryan murmurs quietly under his breath, though there is no way Kyle could have heard him over all of the coughing and spewing.
We look at each other helplessly. Ryan motions for us to follow him to the corner of the room.
“I’ve seen a few people turn and this is pretty advanced. He will vomit until he dies, and then he will come back as a zed.”
I stare wide-eyed at Kyle, and a tear leaks down my face. I’ve only just met him, but seeing another human being like this is horrible.
Kyle spits one last time and lays back on the bed, shaking and weak. I force myself to go over to him and hold a glass of water to his trembling lips. He takes a sip and coughs, and red splatter covers my knuckles.
“Get away from him!” Ryan snaps.
I give Kyle a look that I hope conveys how sorry I am before I retreat to the half-bathroom to scrub my hands. When I get back, Abby is ready and gives me at least ten squirts of the sanitizer.
“I hate seeing him like this,” Abby says, turning away from the scene before her.
Kyle must have started to vomit again while I was in the bathroom, and this time he is too weak to even sit up or hit the bucket. I start towards him when he begins to make a choking, gurgling sound, but Ryan grabs me around the waist and holds me back.
“Let me go!” I yell at him, struggling to get loose so I can roll Kyle on to his side so he isn’t choking on his own bloody puke.
“It’s better this way,” Ryan says grimly as he holds me even tighter. “This is going to save him at least another hour of torture.”
Tears are falling freely down my cheeks now. I stop fighting Ryan and turn into him instead, burying my face in his collarbone. Beside us, Abby starts to cry too. Ryan reaches out and pulls her into our hug. I wrap one arm around my best friend and let loose all the emotions I have been feeling. I feel more than a little guilty that all of my tears aren’t for Kyle, but I can’t stop. Thankfully, the gurgling and spluttering only last a couple of minutes. Then, there is only silence, and the sounds of Abby and I sniffling.
Without warning, Ryan pushes us brusquely away and pulls his knife from the leather on his belt. I hear the awful moan of the dead and then the wet, slurping sound of Ryan’s knife imbedding in Kyle’s head. I cringe when I hear the bone crunch, but, selfishly, I don’t turn around to see and neither does Abby. I feel bad leaving the burden for Ryan.
I hear Ryan go into the bathroom to rinse off his knife, and then I feel the warm press of his hand on my back.
“It’s over now,” he tells us, and his voice sounds like it’s on the edge of cracking. I throw my arms around him, and he shudders for a minute before gently pushing me away. I think if he let me hold him right now, he would probably break down.
In the morning, we move Kyle and his parents’ bodies outside and leave them peacefully underneath a shady old tree in the center of the field. We would have liked to bury them, but we don’t have the time, energy, or resources. I console myself with the fact that they are all together, which is a lot more than a lot of people can say in this apocalypse.
Megan disappears while we are lugging the bodies, and we don’t see her again until we’ve cleaned up and have the suburban packed. I would have been worried, but she is pretty bad ass and there hasn’t been a lot of activity around here the last two days.
We see her just as we’re ready to leave, lugging a box across the yard. Ryan runs over to help her out. His face is comical when we hear the scrabbling of little toes and the unmistakable clucking of chickens.
“What are you doing with those?” Abby asks, wrinkling her nose when Megan opens up the back of the Suburban. I walk over to inspect the cardboard box with few crude holes punched in the top for air.
“Think about it, we can’t just go to the supermarket when we want something.” Megan says, and I have to admit that it’s a great idea.
“There’s a bunch of grain for them in the barn, you should pull around,” Megan tells us as she rams the box of chickens into the already-packed cargo hold. I look over at Abby who’s wrinkling her nose up at the sound of the chickens scrabbling on the cardboard.
“You’ll be thanking me when you’re eating omelettes,” Megan puffs as she pulls herself into the SUV and points over towards the barn.
>
Ryan shakes his head, hiding the first smile I’ve seen on his face since Kyle. “Let’s pick this stuff up and get on the road,” he agrees, putting the car into drive.
Chapter Seven
The clucking about drives us crazy for the first fifty miles or so. After that, I’m not sure if we are growing used to them, or if the chickens are getting used to riding in the car. We are making good time, keeping to the side roads to avoid the major roadways that are probably clogged with zombies and abandoned cars. We see plenty of the dead, wandering around in legions, but they are fairly easy to avoid in the car. Around noon we see a huge group up ahead, shuffling around across the road and even filling the ditches; we have to turn off to avoid them.
“Are they travelling in packs?” Abby asks, leaning forward to observe them.
None of us know the answer. It certainly looks like they are grouping together. I begin to wonder how such a large group of them are randomly congregating in the middle of nowhere. Once we put a bit of distance between us and them, I am able to look back and see the large pileup of vehicles on the highway.
It definitely makes me more leery about being in the vehicle—those people had probably thought they were safe in their cars too.
I look down at the phone clutched in my hand. It’s been dead since yesterday. I’m sure there isn’t any cell service anyway, but it’s hard to give it up. Even if I can’t use it to call out, it still holds so much of my old life. It’s kind of like a memory box. Thankfully, phone chargers are pretty common and there is one in the suburban. Abby used to have the same phone too, but I don’t think she brought it with her. I probably shouldn’t have brought mine, it would have given me a clean, clear break without it. I plug it into the car charger, ignoring the looks from everybody, and watch as the battery slowly climbs. When it’s full, I leave it plugged in and open up my camera roll, flipping through them from start to finish. This time there is no emotional crying. I just look at our smiling faces and remember a happier time.
