The Survival Pact

by Christy Sloat

  “I’m not very religious, you know that,” I explained to Lou. “But it sort of makes sense. Either way we have to do what you said. We have to survive. I trust you, Lou.”

  It was then that I put all my fears aside and trusted Lou to lead me safely. No matter the reasons for what was happening we had to survive and protect ourselves.

  “We have to survive together, Kami, or we will not make it at all.” She looked toward the living room once more and it settled into my mind that Ida will have to stay. She couldn’t survive on the road in her condition.

  “Lou, you can’t leave her here,” I whispered.

  “She’s my mom and I do as she orders. She told me to leave her here with Black Betty and that will be what I do. Even if I don’t want to.”

  Tears filled her eyes and she put her head down in defeat. I know what it’s like to leave someone behind, but that was my choice, this isn’t Lou’s choice.

  I reached across the table and took her hand into mine.

  “We are stronger together,” I told her as I willed my strength into her. “But we need to find Emma.”

  Lou and I did need to leave before it got worse, but we made a promise ten years ago. A promise that we had no idea we would really need to keep. We’d promised to travel up to Washington state where the cabin was in the quiet woods.

  Who knew that the world would turn inside out?

  We were drunk and stupid kids, but we made a pact and it wasn’t worth shit unless Emma was there with us.

  7

  Emma hadn’t answered any of my phone calls or texts and I found out from Lou that she had been trying to call her for days to no avail. Lou gave me Emma’s mom’s phone number and I dialed it. We had to find out where the heck she was.

  “Hi, this is Kami, I am friends with your daughter, Emma,” I explained when her mom answered.

  “Oh, yes, I remember her talking about you. How are you?”

  I didn’t have time to chat with this super nice woman but I didn’t want to be rude.

  “I’m okay. I’m actually a little worried about Emma. Have you heard from her?”

  She laughed and said, “Oh, yeah, don’t worry too much. She’s in the woods on a sabbatical of sorts. She went out to The Great Smoky Mountains to hike this time. She said she needed to be alone for a while.”

  The idea of Emma alone in the woods without cell phone service scared me more than it should. Normally it wouldn’t be anything big for her to go off by herself to think or to hunt. But during this time it was the absolute worst idea for her to be out there alone. Sure, she was a Marine and she probably had guns, but the thought of her alone dealing with this by herself scared me. It was my job to worry about my friends; I did it well from what they say. I was donned the Worry Wart of the group years back. We would go on trips together and it was usually me checking to make sure we all had our things before leaving the hotel. Or it was me planning the trip and the sights we go see. I made it my point to worry about the girls when a certain amount of time passed between phone or text conversations.

  “Do you know when she’s expected back?”

  “I guess when she feels like it. She left about a week ago, I think. She said she wasn’t staying longer than two weeks out there.”

  I looked at Lou as she threw her hands up, wondering what I’ve found out.

  “Well, if you hear from her, please tell her to call me. It’s an emergency.”

  “Will do. Take care,” she said as she hung up.

  I supposed nothing bad has happened to her mom or she wouldn’t be so blasé about things. I relayed the information to Lou, who slammed her hands down on the counter top.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do now?” she asked me with a heavy sigh.

  I didn’t answer because I had no idea what to do. My goal was to get here and I did that. Now I needed Lou to take over.

  I was defeated for now. I wanted nothing more than to crawl up in a comfy bed and sleep this day away. I didn’t want to survive in the wild or have to see another one of those lifeless up close like Lou did.

  “Well, if she’s in the Smoky Mountains then she’s not too far from us. I just wish she’d be at home so we could go talk to her.”

  “Lou,” I said pulling her out of her tantrum.

  “Yeah?”

  “What are they like? The lifeless,” I asked curiously.

  She looked toward the back door where I could see her backyard sprawled over acres and acres of land. The sun was setting and it gave a beautiful orange glow over the mountains.

  “We were watching TV and I don’t know why, but I looked out the door. I never look out there because hardly anything happens in our part of town, but this night I did. I looked out and I saw the earth moving around. At first I thought it was a nest of bunnies unearthing itself, or maybe a mole digging in.” She paused and got a faraway look as if she was seeing it all over again.

  “Then a hand shot out and I was frozen with fear as I watched it crawl up the rest of the way. I tried to get Ida’s attention but she was watching Jeopardy and it’s impossible to break that woman’s concentration when that stupid show’s on. Finally I stood up just as he was fully out of the ground.

  “He looked like he was in his best suit and he actually had a hat on his head still, even though there was holes in it from years of rot. He was a mangled mess of bone and rotten flesh. He walked toward the house where the light from the TV shone onto his face, if you call it that, and he looked right at me like he could see through my soul.”

  I shivered just thinking about it. The guy in New York didn’t look much different except that he seemed more hostile, like the lady on the highway.

  “Did he want to hurt you?”

  She nodded. “He growled at me, and that’s when Ida saw him. He came at the door and started pounding on it like it was his only mission to get inside. She grabbed Black Betty and went around the side of the house real quiet while I stood at the backdoor distracting the dang thing. She shot it in the back first, but that only pissed it off. She tried to shoot it in the head a couple of times, but he turned for her. I had to go out and help her and I threw something at him and he turned back my way, and that’s when she got her shot. Right in the head.” She finished as she pointed toward her skull.

  “You burnt it as well right?”

  She nodded. “I can’t be sure which way killed the damn thing but its dead. Stupid thing should have stayed dead.”

  I shook my head as I tried to shake the vision of the one that tried to attack Sam. It was just as rotted and foul as the one just described to me.

  “Do you think that they are the dead coming back to life to destroy us? Or do you think they are humans being turned into Lifeless things?”

  I knew my question was strange, but I really wanted to know her thoughts. Was this an epidemic or was this something else entirely. I knew her thoughts on the end of the world, but I wanted to know who she thought these dead, Lifeless things really were.

  She thought for a moment and then she said matter-of-factly, “They’re without a doubt the dead come back to life. But as for whether or not they can infect us and we become like them, well, I’m not sure about that.”

  I yawned as a whole day ended and my tired body begged for sleep. I had spent a whole day driving and catching up on the end of the world with my best girl and now I was tired.

  But there was still so much to do. We had to make plans on our course of action and we had to map out our drive. We also had to get more supplies. Of course, that was all on pause until we found Emma.

  “Girls, I’d like you to come in here please,” Ida called from her bedroom.

  We shot up from the couch and went in to see what else she needed. First it was water, then it was another pillow. Lou would do anything to keep Ida comfortable at this point. She was after all leav
ing her mother all alone soon.

  “What do you need, Ma?” Lou asked gently.

  Ida coughed a ragged cough that hurt even my throat. She wiped her mouth and sighed as she handed Lou a keycard.

  “What’s this?” Lou asked, as she flipped it around.

  “It’s my keycard for work. I want you girls to go down there right now, while it’s dark, and stock up on food.”

  I was totally confused at first. Ida hadn’t worked for years now. When she did work she was the head cook at a school cafeteria. I always saw Ida as the badass lunch lady who didn’t take crap from any teenagers.

  “Are you sure about this? What about the other gals that work down there don’t you think they’ll need this food?” Lou asked her mom.

  “You listen here Lou, none of them dimwits will even think about hitting up that school. If they had half a brain they’d be doing something else for a job anyway. I’ve been at that high school since it opened up and I feel I’m owed that food,” she argued. “Now you get down there and you stock up. But take a weapon with ya. And Kami?”

  I straightened and said, “Yes?”

  “You have a weapon?”

  I thought about the gun that was supposed to be holstered to my leg and I winced at the thought. I did have the knife on still and was becoming used to it as the hours went on.

  “I’ll make sure she’s ready, Ma. Go back to bed.” Lou kissed her mom and then pulled me out of the room.

  She tucked the card into her bra and pulled me into the living room where she grabbed my pack and riffled through it until she found the gun. She held it up and without question wrapped the holster around my thigh and put the gun inside.

  “You keep this here and you use it, Kami. Don’t be scared of it. It’s either you or them.”

  I nodded and swallowed hard. I was tired but the surge of adrenaline coursing through my body put away all thoughts of a warm bed. We had work to do.

  “Say it,” Lou demanded.

  “It’s me or them.”

  “And who you going to choose?”

  I knew the answer but my throat ran dry at the thought of running into a Lifeless.

  “I’m gonna choose myself.”

  ****

  We walked out of the house fully prepared to kick ass but, just like when I arrived, there was nothing strange going on. Her only neighbor on her road was having a bonfire with friends like nothing was happening, because to them nothing had. Yet.

  That was the thing. Would it? Maybe. Well, probably.

  If what Lou had said was right, it would happen here slowly, but it would happen. We had time to prepare and time to wait for Emma, but not a lot of time.

  The whole drive to the high school we talked about what our plans were. Lou talked and drove and I wrote things down on a pad of paper that I always carried with me, just in case inspiration hit. It struck me as funny that I would not be writing about fiction in it anymore but about how the hell to stay alive. It was weird how life went so fast and it didn’t ask you if you minded your world turned upside down.

  I absentmindedly scratched my bandaged arm, which I had forgotten about and caused to bleed.

  “Shit!” I cursed.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll re-bandage you when we park,” Lou said. She had become the little doctor of our group all of a sudden. I wasn’t going to complain one bit. “When we get there we’ll have to park away from the cameras and walk inside, is that all right?”

  I nodded and pulled up a map on my cell. I wanted to start mapping out our trip on paper before we lost cell battery or maybe if the towers went down. I was trying to be prepared for everything.

  “I have a map,” Lou told me, pointing to the glove box.

  Of course she did. And I remembered that there was a map in my backpack.

  Lou was an adventurous girl who would get up and go on a trip on a whim. She didn’t ever have to have a passenger either. She would be totally fine driving alone.

  She was fearless.

  As I tracked our trip she drove quietly down the busy roads of Maryville. Life was still going on for most people, while I did see a few with their cars loaded down and heading out of town.

  We pulled down a street and then parked her SUV by the football stadium. I could see the high school in the distance. It was going to be a walk, that was for sure, but I understood about the cameras.

  After she re-wrapped my arm we trekked the small walk, avoiding any cameras that could possibly catch us trespassing.

  “There’s a night custodian, but he’s usually in the halls. He shouldn’t come into the kitchen for any reason,” Lou informed me. “If he does, though, we have to do whatever we can to prevent him from calling the cops. If we are in jail we can’t get to Uncle James’ cabin.”

  I understood what she meant, but my mind couldn’t wrap around killing a night custodian. He was an innocent man who didn’t deserve to die.

  “He’s not going to die tonight, Lou,” I said to her with a stern look.

  “Look,” she began, as we stopped walking. “If he tries to get us to leave, I’m not leaving. I’m going to get my supplies. But if he calls the cops on us, he’s dead meat. There’s no two ways about it.”

  I shook my head and wondered when my best friend became a hard core badass killer.

  Was this always her way? I wasn’t sure if I could answer that or not. While I knew Lou, we never really had to fight to survive. But then again, like I always said, she had that sixth sense that no one else did.

  I had to trust her and that was that. I nodded and we continued to the school.

  When we got closer, Lou pulled out the key card and crouched really low to avoid a camera just outside the door of the front part of the school. I copied her position and crawled with her across the lawn. It was still wet from when they watered it and my pants became saturated in a matter of seconds.

  Wet pants were better than being arrested though, so I kept crawling.

  We reached the side of the school where a single door was located. Outside it said, Cafeteria Deliveries Only.

  That was our door. We crawled toward it and Lou held the key card up to a black scanner. I prayed silently that it wasn’t outdated or for some reason cancelled. But as the door beeped I knew my prayer came true.

  “Thanks, God,” I said, as we went inside.

  “Don’t thank him until we get our stuff and get out of here in one piece.”

  We were standing in a huge kitchen that, even though dark, looked like it held some expensive equipment. For a high school cafeteria they had nice crap. The ovens looked practically brand new and the refrigeration unit was massive.

  “How the hell does this school afford all this?” I asked.

  “We won State, so they gave the school a total makeover,” she said with an eye roll. “You see that cart over there?” she asked me, pointing to a large cart in the corner.

  “Yeah.”

  “Roll it this way.” She pointed toward a set of doors and grabbed herself a cart. I rolled mine in after her and she put on the light. The storeroom of food was bigger than I ever thought it would be. Stacks of food went all the way up to the ceiling. There was no way we would be able to get all this food to the truck in one trip. And we couldn’t be coming in and out of here unnoticed for long.

  “I have an idea,” I said, as Lou began filling up her cart with nonperishables.

  “That’s never a good statement with you, Kami.”

  Smartass.

  “We can’t get this food to the SUV, you and I both know that. We will be rolling these carts across the grass and we will be seen by the cameras. Or even the custodian. And he’s not dying tonight. Not if I can help it.”

  She rolled her eyes and put her hand on her hip.

  “What’s this big plan?”

  “Fi
ll up these carts and just trust me. I’ll be right back,” I said, as I took the keycard from her.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Kami,” she warned.

  “When do I do stupid shit?” I asked jokingly. We both knew the answer was, always, but we both stayed quiet.

  She shrugged and filled the carts as I left the cafeteria and went into the hallway to see if I could find Mr. Custodian. If my plan worked, he would be able to go home to his wife and we could get out of here with our food in one trip.

  I could hear noise coming from the end of the dark hallway so I followed the sound as quietly as I could. Finally I saw him, but he didn’t see me. He was watching TV in the teachers’ lounge and looking quite comfortable I might add. He almost looked like he was falling asleep, which was perfect for my plan to work.

  I crept back and walked into the front office. What I needed would be inside there for sure. I crept along the dark office room like a night burglar, making no sound at all.

  I found the security monitors in the principal’s office and shutting them down was easier than it should have been really. No passwords needed, just a disconnect button on a computer. Stupid place probably didn’t think they needed passwords; who would rob a school?

  I would, motherfucker, that’s who.

  The next thing I needed was keys to the mechanics department. That I wasn’t going to find as easily as I hoped, of course. There had to be a snag in my plans, there always was in life.

  I knew where the keys were and I had to be super stealthy to get them. It was time to see if the custodian was asleep yet.

  8

  His snoring sounded like a freight train, it was so obnoxious. I could almost hear it from the front office, and I actually thought it was a train in the distance. This guy had real sinus issues that was for sure. I crept along the floor and I could see the keys hanging from his large waist. They were clipped to his belt loop. For this to work I had to be quiet and slow, and those were two things I was not.

  I did things at full speed and very loudly in life. I was not known for my grace.