by Tahnee Fritz
Then there’s the zombies who hesitate and they’re beginning to make me nervous. They always stare at us, like their longing for something. Probably wanting their life back. Dwayne doesn’t mind when we see the hesitant ones and thinks if they leave us alone, then we should leave them alone. That maybe they are a part of some new change that’s occurring and we need to let it happen. These hesitant zombies would follow us for a few miles and stop every time we turned around to shoot them. Then they would start following us again until they grew weary and decided to stand around and grunt at anything which didn’t make sense to them. That’s just about everything.
The vamps, we had some trouble with. I’m starting to notice how some plan before they attack. They put a lot of detail into the mix and trick us. Like, a few nights ago, we thought we found a safe campsite. There was even signs of people camping in that spot before us. I guess the vamps knew this and took it upon themselves to keep it that way to make others feel safe. I don’t know where they were hiding that night, but they picked a damn good spot. If it weren’t for the stick breaking under one of their feet, they would’ve had us. Thankfully mother nature was there to warn us.
That was about the worst of our encounters with the vamps. Being taken by surprise can kind of make you not prepared and a little distracted. We still kicked some ass and got away bite free.
So here we are. There were eight of us when we left Hatfeld and eight of us remain. A decent number that has been able to outlive the undead at our feet. Not too many people in this world can say they fought off those demons and survived. Many of the people who’ve tried are one of the undead and we have to fight them off. A never ending circle of life leaving the humans toward the bottom of the food chain. One of these days we’ll take our place at the top again.
It’s raining pretty hard outside right now. The sky is black and it’s the middle of the afternoon. Seth found us a huge house to ride out the storm in. It’s one of those mini mansions that has six bedrooms and four full bathrooms. A kitchen the size of a small apartment and a living room complete with a flat screen TV taking up an entire wall. A house I’ve always wanted to live in yet never thought I’d ever see the inside of one.
We made sure to search the house for vamps and zombies. The main floor, upstairs, and the finished basement are completely monster free. Other than the mold growing in the corners of the ceiling and on the walls, we didn’t find anything. We’ll be safe here for one night.
Sherry made herself comfortable in one of the master bedrooms. She’s been spending a lot of time with Seth and they’re in there right now talking about their lives. I think she has a crush on him. Carter and Dwayne are in the kitchen trying to make our small amount of food last a while longer. Jim is playing a board game with Dillon at the dining room table and they seem to be having a pretty good time by how much laughter I can hear from them.
Ryder and I are left alone in the living room. We sit on the enormous couch staring out the huge bay windows at the rain pouring in the lake behind the house. Bars have been placed over the windows, probably after the cure took a turn for the worst. At least whoever these rich bastards used to be, they took precautions to make their home safe. Comes in handy when you’re traveling. Kudos to them.
Ryder has his feet propped up on the ottoman, his right hand resting comfortably across his chest. He’s still experiencing some pain when he bends at certain angles, but for the most part, he’s healing. I sit next to him, my feet folded on the couch next to me and my head resting on his shoulder. I watch the rain drops hit the window making it look like a waterfall on the house. It makes the outside world a little blurry.
“So, you ever think you’d be sitting in a house like this?” I ask.
“Not at all.” Ryder says. “What about you?”
I shake my head and smile, “The house I grew up in wasn’t even half this size. I had to share a room with my sister for ten years until my dad finished my awesome room in the attic. Even had an air conditioner up there.”
“I don’t even think you could consider the place I grew up in a house at all. There were three bedrooms and one bathroom and a shitload of kids. Don’t even remember any of their names and I was stuck sharing a room with all of them. I prefer this life much more than the one I had before the cure.” He says. “What about you, Bridge?”
I’m not sure how to answer that. There’s too many things about my old life that I miss more than anything else in the world. My family being the main part of that life. I would give anything to see them one more time. To talk to them, to hug them back and to hear their voices. There’s just only one thing I have that I can give to get that again. I’m just really starting to like my life right now so giving it up would be extremely hard and, not to mention, probably painful.
I sit up and put my feet on the floor.
“Bridget, I’m sorry if what I said was the wrong thing. I know you had a great family and a great life before all of this.” Ryder says.
I turn to him and smile, “It’s okay. I want to show you something.” I reach for my bag and bring it onto the couch next to me.
The sound of the zipper echoes a little in this big house. I sift through the things in my bag and dig down to the bottom. I pull out the black album and set it on my lap then lean back against Ryder.
“What’s that?” he asks.
I swallow hard and say, “This was my life before the vampires, before the zombies, before things literally went bump in the night.” I open the photo album to the first page and show my family to him. “My mom and dad, my brother Charlie and my sister Maggie and then there’s me.” It’s still really painful to look at the pictures, but I have to.
He sits up as best as he can without bringing pain to his chest and smiles at the pictures as I turn the pages, “They look like they would have been an awesome family.”
“They were.” I agree, hating how their lives have been transferred to the past tense. “They were always there when I needed them, even when I didn’t want them to be.”
“They were the kind of family you would prefer over this life and I don’t blame you for thinking that. If I had something like that to go back to, I’d want to in a second.” Ryder says, his eyes still looking at the pictures.
I take a deep breath, trying to keep the lump from coming to my throat as I stare at the pictures, “Being with my family was a great part of my life. Growing up with people who cared about me, who loved me more than anything else in the world, that was the best part. But, that was just the first part of my life and a part that I’ll never have back and I think I can be okay with that. I know that wherever they are right now, they’re watching over me to make sure I survive this part of my life. Bridget part two, I guess. This is the part of my life that makes me who I am and who I am going to be.
“Sure, I’d love to go back in time to see my family again, but I can’t truthfully say I’d give up what I have in this chapter of my life to have what I had when I was a kid. I’ll miss them every day, for the rest of my life and I’ll never stop thinking about them. I just really like what I have now, with you, Ryder. You’re the best part of my life right now and I don’t want to give that up. As hard as it may seem, I know my family understands that I’m doing what I know is right.”
“You really wouldn’t give all of this up to be with your family again? You’d really stay in this horrible world forever, instead of going back to what you had before all this?” he asks.
I take a deep breath, “I would, because I wouldn’t want to go somewhere if I knew you couldn’t come with me. I’m kinda getting used to saving you.”
He smiles and says, “Yeah, you have saved my life like six different times now.”
I shrug, “I’ve learned from the best.” I motion to my family in the pictures. “These people right here, taught me everything I know, especially my dad. If it weren’t for him, I’d be dead right along with them and so would you. Those zombies in that town where we met, would have
had you for an afternoon snack.”
“Yeah, probably.” He says. “You know, you’re a pretty great person, Bridget. You’ve been through hell and back with what this world has given us and you still stay strong. I think that’s just about the best thing about you and your family would be extremely proud of you for making it this far. I know I am.”
I feel a tear in the corner of my eye and I wipe it away quickly. I flip another page of the photo album and stare down at the picture on the page. Christmas, when I was about five years old. There I am, sitting on the couch next to my mom with her arm around my shoulder. She always was one for posing for the camera. Seeing their faces brings back all the memories of how things used to be. Thinking of them fills my heart with grief and sorrow and I don’t want to be sad right now. I want to be happy, well as happy as I could be in a world filled with monsters.
“Hey,” Ryder says, then takes my photo album away from me and closes it, “it’s time to stop looking at your past and focus on your future. Like you said, the family in this book got you to where you are today, but the family your with right now, in this awesome house, is the family who will get you to where you need to be tomorrow.”
I sniffle and swallow the lump in my throat, “This will be a strange new family of mine.”
He smiles, “Mine too.”
“Have I told you how much you make me fall in love with every time you say amazing things like that?” I say.
He nods, “Yeah, but I love hearing you say it again.”
He puts his hand on the back of my neck and pulls my lips to his. I close my eyes and let the warmth of his mouth caress my own.
The rain cleared overnight and I had the best sleep I’ve had in a very long time. I might have fallen asleep with my head on Ryder’s shoulder while sitting on the couch, but I’ve never slept better. I think being cuddled up next to someone I feel completely safe with, makes the weight of the world disappear from my shoulders. I didn’t have any horrible dreams about zombies chasing me or waking up with a vamp sucking the blood out of my neck. I didn’t have any dreams at all.
The night was just perfect.
We left that perfect night back in that big house a few hours ago. With the sun shining down on top of us, we couldn’t have asked for a better day to make it to a new city to start over. A new place to settle down in. A place where I won’t have to worry about fighting bad guys or saving anybody. I’ll only have to worry about waking up in the morning and making new friends and living a somewhat normal life for once. You know, the kind of life that isn’t spent on the road all day, every day. The kind without zombies to kill or food to search for because it will be provided.
The kind of life that already makes me miss the one I have now.
I’ll miss sleeping in a different place every night of the week. Seeing all the wonderful sights this country has to offer. The mountains, the forests, things you can’t find behind the walls of a fortified city. Searching for food and water sucks, but it’s always an adventure. I think I’ll even miss the constant fear of dying. The fear that at any moment a vamp or a zombie could devour me and that would be it. Call me crazy, but I’ll miss it.
I’ll miss being a badass and killing zombies like they’re nothing. Shooting them in the head, watching their already lifeless bodies fall limp to the ground. I’ve gotten over my fear of confronting vampires and I’m finally able to pull the trigger without thinking about it. If I go to a city and live behind the walls they have built, I won’t have any of that. I won’t get the chance to save someone I didn’t even know was around me at the time. I won’t be able to help the human race overcome this disease the cure has brought. I’ll be just another person who managed to stay alive through it all and my story of survival will be over.
I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for that.
We keep walking, going under a corroding over pass with cars piled up on either side of it. Most of them are completely totaled and only two are in somewhat good condition. The batteries are most likely more than dead and the cars will never be driven again, but at least they’re not completely destroyed like the rest of them.
On the other side of the overpass, we see it. A few miles to go and we’ll be standing right outside the towering metal wall surrounding a city I assumed was long gone. The city where the human race is managing to stay alive. As long as they aren’t doing so by trading people like us to the vampires, I might be okay with it.
Seeing this wall should make me happy. Ryder has a grin on his face as we move toward it. The others keep talking about the life they can’t wait to have inside this new city. I don’t feel as happy as I should be. I’m grateful this isn’t a rumor, that this place actually exists. I’m glad to know humans are able to live without worrying. Those walls look pretty damn impenetrable to me, which is a very good thing. There’s just something wrong with me to want to believe I’ll be happy there.
This has been a dream of mine and my father’s for a long time. Finding a safe place to live out the rest of our lives. It’s what we used to always talk about. He never told me how weird it would be actually getting to that new life.
Our little group moves faster out of sheer excitement of finding this new city and the nerves are rising in my stomach with every step I take. We cover the last couple miles and we’re approaching the gate faster than I wanted to. I guess I’m the only one who wants to relish in these last few moments of being a traveler.
The walls are much taller this close, at least fifty or sixty feet high. Made completely of metal pieces that are welded together to seal everything in and keep bad things out. I can see people walking back and forth on top of the wall, carrying guns and keeping watch over the city. They look just like the soldiers back at Hatfeld. There’s a sign right outside the gate that reads “THE CITY OF DES MOINES WELCOMES YOU”. I’m still not feeling as welcome as I know the rest of the group is.
One of the soldiers walking on top of the gate spots us. He orders us to stop walking, which we do so, then I see him speaking into a walkie-talkie. I can’t hear what he says, but it obviously gets a someone to open a large door at the base of the gate. A few men come running out, keeping their guns close at hand in case we’re not as human as we look. One of the men is wearing a grey suit and tie, holding some sort of scanner attached to a laptop in his hands. The glasses on his face are thick and he still squints at the screen he’s holding.
They stop walking a few feet away from us. Guns aimed for our heads.
“I assume all of you are humans, but you know we have to take precautions.” The man with the glasses states, his voice is calm and sincere. “This device I’m holding allows me to scan your retinas to detect certain pigments in your eyes. It lets us know if you’re alive or one of the undead. A few others and myself have developed this software and have saved thousands of lives.”
He approaches Carter first and shines a little red light in his left eye. He reads something on the laptop, waits for a beep, then smiles at the big guy. Next he goes onto Jim and Sherry.
“We always enjoy knowing there are still surviving humans out there. You travelers are the best thing this planet has to offer.” He smiles every time the scanner beeps. “You guys see things up close and personal. You know how to defeat them better than some of our own army. Believe me when I say that we more than welcome your coming here. Des Moines is one of the few fortified cities left in the country and one of the few that isn’t relying on other tactics to keep safe.”
“Yeah, we ran into one of those a couple weeks ago.” Jim adds.
“My name is Bill Wireman, by the way.” He moves from Dillon and onto Seth. “Once we’re inside, you can introduce yourselves and tell us a little about you and the road you’ve traveled. We have a record keeper that jots the most important details down for future reference. From there, we’ll find all of you a place to call home for however long you’d like.”
He shines his little scanner in Ryder’s eyes. It takes a few seconds,
then beeps once to let us all know Ryder hasn’t been infected by the cure. Lastly, it’s my turn. I squeeze Ryder’s hand, for some reason I’m more nervous than I should be. I know I’m not infected, but what if that thing malfunctions and says I’m dead even when I’m not? Machines are known for not being the most reliable things on the planet and I’ve seen them go bad hundreds of times while growing up. So, I stare at the red dot shining in my eye and hold my breath. The seconds go by like hours until I hear that little beep and I’m able to breathe again.
“See, painless.” Bill says with a smile. “All of you can follow us inside and we’ll take you to get settled. We have everything you need here, running water, electricity throughout the entire city. There’s a couple thousand of us living here and there’s plenty of room for more. We truly hope you will make Des Moines your new home.”
Bill turns around and walks with his men back to the door at the gate. My little group is right behind them. They are much braver than I am at this moment. I’ve been face to face with god knows how many terrible things, but going to spend the rest of my life in a safe zone is the one thing that’s tearing me apart inside.
I can’t move my legs.
I’m frozen.
My mind is still trying to come up with a logical explanation as to why my life will be better being trapped behind a giant metal wall surrounding a city. I’ll be stuck doing the same thing day after day, never knowing when something amazing will happen, never being part of the action. I won’t be the hero Sherry likes to call me.
Then, Ryder turns around and stares at me. I look into his eyes and suddenly things start to make sense. In order to keep him in my life forever, I don’t want to risk anything by staying on the road. I don’t want to go days searching for food and only coming up with morsels. I don’t want to try sleeping in a place infested with vampires. I want to be safe, with Ryder. I want to make sure both of us are alive and well each day of the week. I want to stay loving him until the end of time. Being a traveler has too many risks to make that one hundred percent possible.
