Lilly doesn’t find it funny. Her eyes are alight with possibility—and hunger, a ravenous hunger. Makes me think of the zombies in an odd sort of way. I meet her gaze for a moment, and then she’s back down to Earth, back to her currently worried state.
“Not a good idea,” she says. “The noise of the gunshot will draw unwanted attention up here, don’t you think?”
Of course this is a rhetorical question. I know Lilly well enough to sense that, but I answer anyway.
“I’m not gonna shoot it.”
“Then how are you gonna catch something?” she probes.
I breathe on my dirty nails and wipe them on my even dirtier, bloody jacket, like I’m hot shit. “I have my ways.”
“Jack, you’re not a hunter, dude,” Abby says between fits of laughter. Her eyes are watery and her face is flushed.
“I’m glad I can still make you laugh, Ab,” I tell her, “but I was on the road for years after Haven fell. I didn’t eat much, but I didn’t starve, either.”
“Looks like you were pretty close.” Abby sticks a finger in her mouth and then points it up in the air. “Gotta test the wind here, Jack. Too strong of a gust might blow you back to Chicago.”
Lilly joins in on the laughter. I even let out a few chuckles. Nothing like a good ribbing to lighten the mood, right?
I turn and leave the campfire, heading into the dark woods beyond. As I get farther away, I can still hear them chortling at my expense.
Norm taught me many things during our time on the road. One of these things was how to set a snare to catch rabbits. Unfortunately, I don’t have all the tools needed for the most effective one, but I have enough.
Since the decline of man, wildlife, like Mother Nature, has been going through a revival. No longer do deer have to stray away from the busy highways and roads. No longer do packs of wolves avoid the once big and bustling cities. Certain species’ populations have probably quadrupled since man was all but killed off, unless the disease that turned everyone into mindless monsters somehow affected animals too—I can’t say it hasn’t for sure, but it wouldn’t be all animals, at least. This means that the animal-to-man ratio is even higher than zombie-to-man. Rabbits and deer and raccoon and possum, wild dogs, feral cats, you name it.
I have seen deer walking down the middle of roads, sniffing large trucks—once one of the main culprits of their demise—curiously and without fear. I have seen rabbits sitting on the porches of abandoned houses, their ears back and their noses twitching.
It’s safe to say I will catch something out here tonight. I would be surprised if I didn’t.
So I set the snare up using the antenna wire from the truck and my knife to cut it. Near a low bush, I anchor it into the stump of a fallen tree, and I wait.
Norm always said that to be successful when hunting, like most everything in life, the key was patience. And he was right.
I sit not far away, but out of sight of the snare, and I wait, and I listen. I wait for a long, long time, until Abby and Lilly are probably wondering where I’m at.
It looks like there won’t be any meals tonight. We’ll have to hold off until the morning and see if I snared anything, or take a detour and scavenge like we usually do.
I get up from my spot carefully, trying to be quiet. I’d hate to scare away an approaching rabbit, but that’d be just my luck. Then I’m back on the path, heading toward the crackling flames of the campfire.
A few steps later, nature is calling. Yes, I have to relieve myself, a detail I often left out of the books I used to write, but it’s the truth. I am nothing if not honest. I have to go, and call me old-fashioned, but I enjoy a little privacy when I do the deed. So I step off the path that I’d mentally chartered in my head.
I’m not worried about getting lost. Norm has taught me a good deal about finding your way, all these tips and tricks that sound ridiculous and made up until they’re proven right. Like how moss mostly grows on the north side of trees. That kind of stuff seemed useless to me once upon a time, but has saved my life more times than I’d ever imagine.
Another few steps into the thick of the forest, and I see something in the distance. I can’t make out what it is, but it gleams slightly with starlight. A beacon.
For the moment, all thoughts of relieving myself are gone, and I find I’m walking toward the shining object, my weapon raised defensively in front of me.
Seventeen
I come out of the brush and bramble a few minutes later. Pause. Wait for any sounds. After about thirty seconds—which is not enough time, but I’m just too damn excited about what I see—I step forward.
In the tightest of spots, a Jeep is parked between two large firs. Yeah, cool, right? A Jeep…great. It’s not lost on me that it’s a Jeep, either. Norm had a Jeep. We escaped Woodhaven in it at the onset of the disease, and we lived in that Jeep for a long time before we had to abandon it in a field somewhere on our way to Eden. But it’s not the Jeep my eyes linger on. It’s what’s attached to it.
A dull silver Airstream camper, the kind that were common before RVs got popular for being more luxurious.
Leaves are scattered all over it, dusty and dirty. It looks like a giant toaster. The windows, two big squares on the side facing me, are grimy with age. The wheels are deflated, the towing hook rusted.
This thing looks like it’s been here a while.
In front of it are the tattered remains of fold-up canvas chairs. Lying nearby is an equally rusted pot and spoon, and faded food packages.
I tiptoe toward it, careful not to make a sound, and go around the other side. There is a large dent in the metal, as if something hit it at full speed, trying to get inside. A bear, probably.
Though in the back of my mind, I’m thinking a horde of zombies is more likely.
I bend down and pick up one of the old packages. Ballpark Franks, plastic that will stay around the earth for a couple hundred years before it’ll decompose. It looks like someone was having a cookout, roasting weenies over an open fire. Probably fifteen years ago. I can picture them, my writer’s imagination kicking into overdrive.
That sort of thing, I guess, never leaves you.
There’s a survivalist dad, the kind of guy who’s always prepared for the end of the world, the mild-mannered mom, who enjoys shopping and rolling her eyes at her husband’s crazy end-of-the-world theories, and maybe a couple of kids. They hear about the disease, the panic, the widespread death and destruction, and pops decides it’s best to dust off the old Airstream camper, go far up into the Indiana wilderness, and wait it out. Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned, and depending on what I find inside of the camper, my guess is one of them was infected with the virus, maybe the mom or little Suzy Q. They’re all sleeping one night, dreaming of the old world, when Suzy Q dies and comes back as a zombie. She snacks on her family then moves on when the bones are stripped of flesh, muscle, and sinew.
Probably.
Like I said, I’m a realist, not so much an optimist.
I wish that isn’t what happened. I wish they decided it was just time to move on, only this time without the Airstream…and the Jeep.
I guess I’ll find out.
I step through the fire pit, careful to avoid kicking the metal pot they must’ve used to cook with. The grass here is no longer burned, but bustling and very green, grown around a circle of rocks they used to contain the flames.
At the window, I take my jacket sleeve and wipe some of the dust away. The motion makes a very soft squeaking noise. Behind the panes, however, are thick blue curtains. I can’t see inside. Unfortunately.
Oh well, it’s time for the tap test.
With the butt of my gun, I knock on the side of the trailer three times, each one slow and deliberate, claps of thunder in the quiet of the forest.
I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t scared, that I wasn’t imagining the decrepit corpse of little Suzy Q, perpetually as young as she was when the disease took her, coming to the window, press
ing her rotted face against the glass, snapping her yellow teeth.
A couple seconds, a few more, and…nothing. No zombie. No little Suzy Q or her rabid brother. I think I’m in the clear.
The door isn’t locked, but it is rusted as hell. I’m gentle when I pull the handle, as gentle as I can be while still actually opening it, but I almost rip the damn thing off completely.
With a groan and a screech, the latch finally gives. Slowly, I ease the door open with the barrel of my gun. The hinges resist and eventually give in. This place hasn’t been inhabited for a long time.
Inside is dark, and there’s a sickeningly sweet smell, like cinnamon.
I know that smell.
My eyes settle on the dead body—well, it’s not much of a body anymore—on one of the two small beds in the back. I’m drawn to it, curious. I flip open my lighter and spark it.
An open-mouthed, mummified skeleton lays on an olive-green comforter. A dark stain surrounds it. Its hands rest on its sternum. It wears a too-baggy camouflage shirt tucked into sand colored cargos. Dog tags around its neck.
So I was at least partially right. This guy was probably the doomsday prepper from my elaborate fantasy. He didn’t outlast doomsday, however.
I don’t linger. I turn from the body and begin pawing through the items in the cupboard. It seems I have hit the jackpot.
Canned foods: diced tomatoes, green beans, corn, peaches, pears, and cherries. There are a couple cans of chicken noodle soup, but they’ve bulged, which I know means they’re contaminated. Then again, these items are probably all over fifteen years old, hardly ideal. If the FDA was still around, I’d expect they’d burn me at the stake for even thinking of eating these. But a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do to survive.
In the small refrigerator, which lets out a terrible smell of rotted fish and age when I open it, I find bottles of Deer Park water, and some milk that’s literally just dust. I take the water, leave the milk. In a cabinet next to the fridge, I find the true jackpot. The booze. A box of canned Budweiser that would taste like skunk in liquid form, some Captain Morgan rum, and a big bottle of whiskey, aged eighteen years at the time of purchase, now pushing forty, almost as old as me.
I grab the whiskey and the rum. Doubt the rum will be drinkable, but the whiskey will go well with the canned food, maybe even with some rabbit.
All of these goods are piled into a computer bag I find hanging from the back of a chair. I take the computer out, an HP, and leave it—no use for that kind of stuff anymore—then I keep searching. A guy like this has to have weapons.
We have the rifles and ammunition from the people we killed at the warehouse, but it isn’t much. You can never have too many bullets in the wasteland. That’s my motto, anyway.
Under the bed, I find a hunting rifle, make and model unknown. All I know is its loaded. That gets me wondering about this fellow. How’d he die?
I lean my lighter over his face again, but I don’t see any bullet wounds, so he didn’t shoot himself. Looks like he went peacefully. Maybe it was old age. Maybe he ate some bad squirrel or something. I don’t know.
As I’m leaving with the stuff, I look back and say, “Thank you.”
The world has turned to shit, but I still have my manners.
Eighteen
On my way back, I hear a high-pitched scream. I know instantly that it’s not human. My snare has worked.
I rush toward it, afraid the noise the animal is making will draw unwanted attention, whether it be zombies or other predatory animals that could cause problems. Inside my snare is a little rabbit. Not much meat on it. Fluffy and cute.
As I approach, the rabbit jerks crazily.
“Hey, buddy,” I say.
If I am being totally honest, I don’t care for rabbit. I’d much rather have chicken or a nice steak. However, that’s not possible now, not here, at least. This rabbit won’t fill me up, let alone Lilly and Abby too. So I take my knife out and grab the snare.
The fear in the rabbit’s eyes breaks my heart. I think of Darlene. She would let it go even if she was one missed meal away from total starvation. Besides, I have the canned foods, the water, and the whiskey.
You know damn well you’d let this little critter go even if you never found the food in the camper, Norm says inside my head. You’re too soft, little bro. Too soft.
Of course, he’s (I’m) right. Seeing the rabbit, the fear, the cuteness, I could never eat it. I’m not totally starving.
With the blade, I cut the snare, freeing the rabbit. Instead of taking off, it stops its screaming and looks at me with big, round, grateful eyes.
A smile stretches across my face, and I think, Look at the crazy guy, smiling at rabbits in the dark! Jesus, Jack. What’s happening to you?
Then the critter takes off, the brush rustling with its flight.
Abby and Lilly are laughing it up when I get back to the campfire. The flames are burning low, so I instinctively add more wood to it.
“Took you long enough,” Abby says, her eyes wet with happy tears. “I was just telling Lilly about that time you fell when you were rollerblading, right into the dessert table.”
Lilly starts cracking up again at the mention of it.
Ah, a simpler time.
During one of our get-togethers at Haven, I thought it would be amusing to try to rollerblade into the hall where we ate our big, important meals. The problem was I’d only rollerbladed a handful of times in my life, and that had been when I was just a kid, when I was still coordinated…not yet the lanky desk monkey I’d eventually become. And the other problem was that I was pretty drunk.
I learned that some of the worst decisions of our lives come when we are under the influence. Some of the best times happen too, though.
“Not my proudest moment,” I say to Lilly, raising an eyebrow. “I have a lot of un-proud moments.”
“Me too, Jack. Don’t worry,” she says.
“Not me,” Abby says, sticking her chest out, her good hand on her hip, smiling wide.
“Oh, don’t get me started—” I begin, but Abby changes the subject.
She knows there’s a hundred embarrassing stories I could tell about her. When you live with someone for so long, you see those things. But hey, that’s all part of what makes up a person, isn’t it?
“So, where were you? Where’s our little Peter Cottontail?” Abby asks.
“Let him go,” I say. “He wouldn’t have filled us up anyway.”
The girls chuckle at that. I’m full of good jokes tonight, I guess. When I don’t smile back, Abby cocks an eyebrow up. “Wait, you’re serious? You caught a rabbit and you let it go?”
Nodding, I set the laptop bag in front of them, the cans clinking against the glass bottle of whiskey.
“What’s that?” Lilly asks.
“Open it and find out.”
“It’s not gonna be, like, a severed head, is it?” Lilly probes. “No offense, Jack, but you totally seem like the kind of guy who would find humor in something like that.”
“Uh…offense taken,” I say, frowning. “Just open the bag. It’s Christmas Part Two.” I hold my index and middle finger up in a peace sign.
Lilly continues staring at the bag, which I have to say does kind of look like it could be holding a lumpy, severed head.
“Oh, come on,” Abby says. She snatches the bag away and undoes the clasp. “Holy shit. Where did you find all this stuff?”
“Camper,” I tell her. “About a quarter mile north.”
Lilly’s eyes tear up. It’s sad, I think, how joyous we get over decades-old canned goods.
“Zombies?” Abby asks.
The first thing she picks up is the bottle of whiskey. Of course.
“Nope. Just a dead guy. Looked like he died peacefully on his bed.”
“Bed?” Abby twists the lid off the bottle, pulls the cork out with a pop! She brings it up to her nose and inhales. “Mm.”
“Yeah. A couple beds. It was pretty nic
e. Had a funky smell, cinnamon-like.”
On cue, both Lilly and Abby stand up.
“Well, shit, what the hell are we doing here?” Abby says.
“Staying close to the truck,” I answer.
She waves her hand at me. “The truck isn’t going anywhere. This place is secluded. C’mon. I need a bed.”
“Me too,” Lilly moans. “My spine is callused from sleeping on hard places.”
What the women want, they get.
I stand up, gather our supplies, and lead them to the Airstream. When we get there, we get another fire going on the bones of the pit the man had once used. We warm up some beans, and eat the canned cherries for desert. We take turns sipping from the aged whiskey, smiling, our cheeks flushed, our minds buzzing.
Then, when it’s time to hit the hay, Lilly and I roll the dead man up in his soiled blankets and carry him outside. We set him not far from the camper and the Jeep. I flip the mattress over, hiding the stains the man left when he died. Lilly and Abby share the bed opposite.
Outside, using a ball of yarn, the empty cans, and the pots and pans from the little kitchen, I rig a perimeter around the campsite. It’s not very big, won’t give us much time if a zombie or two decides to find us up here, but it’ll give us some time, and that’ll be good enough. Tonight, none of us want to stay up on watch. We are tired, happy, and slightly drunk.
It might be risky, I know. It might prove to be a bad idea, but if we die tonight, at least we’ll die in good spirits.
When I come back in to the trailer, both Lilly and Abby are snoring away, Abby hogging most of the small mattress. I smile at them like a proud father, and then I lie down.
I’m asleep almost as soon as my head hits the mattress.
Nineteen
Surprisingly, I think we all sleep through the entirety of the night. I wake up sometime just before noon. Lilly and Abby are still knocked out. A gleam of drool runs down the corner of Lilly’s mouth; Abby’s snoring away. She doesn’t snore lightly either, she sounds like a chainsaw.
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