by Misti Vanhoy
Had we not known any better, we would have thought that the zombies were sleeping. They stood there in their groups with their heads bowed together and their arms hanging limply at their sides. They made no noises and that alone was the only giveaway that they were awake. They were merely resting and waiting for an unsuspecting person to come by for lunch. One tiny noise or one whiff of your scent and you were doomed. Dead before you could get three feet from where you stood. They would close you into a circle of death and you would never get out alive.
Reagan appeared unimpressed and confident. I wasn’t surprised, though. She had that look on her face multiple times over the last few years. The only thing that concerned me was the fact that nothing ended well when she wore that expression. She always had a habit of getting us into trouble or bringing death down upon us when she got like this. I sent up a quick, silent prayer that this would be one of those instances where she wasn’t bad luck for me.
“Now, wait! Before you go getting any crazy ideas, we can’t fight off all these zombies by ourselves. Hell, I don’t think the four of us would be able to,” I whispered by her ear, concerned for our well-being. Her eyes closed as a contented smile flashed across her face.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got this covered. We only need to kill two of them, maybe even just one, and the others won’t even know we’re here,” she replied, digging out her knives.
“And how do you plan on attracting only two of them?”
She looked at me with an evil expression on her face. My heart sank to my feet. I dreaded the answer to that instantly. I knew it wasn’t a good one. “We need to swing around to those two over there and slay them where they walk,” she replied. She pointed to two zombies that were walking around farthest away from the majority. “Then drag them back here to dissect.”
“And if we get sniffed out, our future is hopeless. We can’t get the others to safety if we’re dead.”
“Do you want our safety now or their survival later? Your choice.” She folded her arms across her breast, tap-tap-tapping her foot with impatience. She was cute when she did that. The way she was leaning more on one foot than the other, causing her hips to lean at an angle, made it harder to look at. She was perfection in every sense of the word.
I smiled slightly, hoping she couldn’t tell by my face what I was thinking. “We came all this way, Reagan. We might as well go through with it.” I waved her ahead of me, following close behind to protect her flank.
My heart raced as we crept up as silently as we could behind the two lonely zombies. The wind was in our favor for the time being. Their expressions never changed as we crept closer and closer, a big relief to me. As long as they didn’t react to anything, it meant they didn’t hear or smell us. Our safety was reliant on that fact not changing. Should it change, we would have the entire street of undead jumping on us in a heart beat and my dad would never know what happened to us. They would find our bodies later, if even at all.
The one closest to us, a woman in a flowing pink dress, walked continuously in circles as she tried to decide what to do with herself until her next meal came around. Her eyes were dead, even for a zombie. The milky tint we were so used to seeing was actually a purplish-blue for her. I wondered if perhaps she had been blind when she had been bitten. Made sense with the way she was stumbling around in circles. I felt pity for her. She would’ve never seen this coming. She had been easy food for her attacker.
We felt the change of wind direction, holding our breaths as we waited to see if she would react. Her nose wrinkled when we were three feet from her and she grunted with anticipation. She turned in our direction with a wicked, yellow smile. Her face was clearly decomposing. The skin wasn’t torn off, but it looked like it had melted away from the muscle and bone. By her clothing, I thought she might have been closer to my age than the fifty-something her now wrinkled face gave her the appearance of. Her arms reached out to us and she took a few unsteady steps our way. With a few quick wrist motions, Reagan and I both unleashed knives on this undead woman. With an almost unrealistic precision, both of us aimed at her head, striking exactly where we had meant to.
She went down, her legs crumpling out from under her as her brain ceased all signals to her body. I rushed to catch her and prevent her from alerting others when her body hit the ground with a loud thump. I grunted and strained under her dead weight as I laid her down gently upon the asphalt. Her stench was beyond the capabilities of a normal stomach, but having dealt with it for many years I had built up a defense against the smell. If you could even describe the way that the zombies stunk, it would be a mixture of sewage, skunk spray, fresh cow shit, a dead animal, and the vomit of someone who had drank too much alcohol. I doubted, though, that the mixture would even smell that strongly. I pulled our knives from her head, wiped them off on her pretty dress, and handed Reagan hers back.
With a quick look around, I rose to my feet swiftly, happy that we had managed this far without alerting the snoozing crowds. But that feeling was shattered quickly. To my dismay, our other target had wondered over near one of the huddled groups while we were busy slaughtering the female. Getting him would be way too risky now. I turned to Reagan and gestured to her to help me move the female to where we had sat in the alleyway. She rolled her eyes at my reluctance to put my life in jeopardy, but picked up the zombie’s feet as I grabbed her underarms.
We gracelessly hauled the body back to the alley, setting her down behind the large dumpster. This was the part I always dreaded. The stench of these walking corpses was bad enough while they were somewhat living. When killed, their bodies decayed faster, sending out nauseating fumes of gasses and odors that made even the toughest stomach want to hurl. The worst part is we were about to cover ourselves in her blood and other liquids. It was an almost fool-proof way to just walk on by zombies without being detected. Its only downfalls were washing away in the rain and those zombies that fed on others as a last resort.
Reagan shoved the tip of her knife into the top portion of the corpse’s lower abdomen, jerking her wrist to get the blade to slide down the length of its pelvis. We couldn’t force the knife upwards as the rib cage had fused together from the virus to protect the internal organs, specifically the heart. Putrid gasses rushed out with the stench of hundreds of rotting eggs. I gagged as the vapors filled my nostrils and lungs, covering my mouth and nose to prevent anything worse from happening. Food was scarce enough without losing breakfast over a corpse even if it was just a pack of crackers. There was no telling what I would have to eat next, or even when, so I needed to control my bodily functions as much as possible.
“I’ll never get used to this,” I gagged again as Reagan stuck both of her hands in the stomach cavity under the ribs and pulled it open as far as she could.
“Yeah, well, you gotta do what you gotta do,” she absently replied. Her thoughts had drifted away to something more bearable than what she was doing at the moment. I learned a while back that she did this anytime there was something she didn’t want to remember going on. She never would tell me what it was that she thought about in times like these, but it worked well. “You first, sunshine.”
I gulped hard, fighting down the lump that had grown in my throat. Shaking my head to try to empty it of this moment like Reagan had, I slipped off my top long sleeve shirt, exposing the spaghetti strap underneath, and plunged it into the stomach cavity we had just opened. I winced as blood and guts touched my hand, oozing out over my shirt to soak into the porous fibers. I kept thinking of Samantha being able to play outside again so that I could keep my food from spewing out all over the place.
“Ok. You’ve had it in there long enough. It’s my turn,” Reagan whispered. She knew I was fighting my bodily functions right now and didn’t want to jolt me back to reality too hard by talking too loudly. I pulled my shirt free gladly and wrung it out to get rid of the excess blood and body matter. The brown, clotted mess was slow to drip off and only made it harder for me to resist vomiting as
I watched it.
I cringed as Reagan soaked her shirt in the body, too. The vacuum, slurping sound it made as the shirt was pushed down into it had my stomach turning flips. She looked up at my pained expression, rolled her eyes, and took my shirt from my hands. With a few swift motions, she cleaned the excess blood and tissue from it. “You’re such a wimp. I can’t believe you have problems doing something so simple,” she said with harshness to her voice. I instantly felt like a scolded child. Why couldn’t I be more like her? Why couldn’t I be tough?
“Because you were raised by your family, protected from the rest of the world,” Reagan stated as she wrung out her own shirt.
“Do what?” I asked. Her statement broke me from my trance. Why would she say something like that? Could she read my mind? No, there’s no way. But, then again, I used to think zombies could never exist. Look at the world we’re in now.
“It looked like you were thinking ‘why can’t I be just like Reagan’ so I answered you. Was I wrong?” Her puzzled look, complete with her head cocked to the side, caused my heart to skip despite the blood on her hands. She was so perfect with her hair falling over her right shoulder, resting on her bosom. Her skin that was hidden by her clothes on a daily basis was a porcelain color now that she had bared it to me. Her spaghetti strap was just as form fitting as the rest of her outfit.
“No, you’re right. That’s what I was thinking. You didn’t have a family?” I asked, prying my eyes away from her to pull my shirt over my head, cringing as the cold blood touched my skin and the stench wafted to my nostrils. My food crept its way up my throat, threatening to show its existence.
“I’m not going to talk about it. That’s something I like to share only with myself.” She snatched her shirt over her head, quickly sheathed her knife, and stood up roughly. It was as though someone had stuck a stick up her ass.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. Here, let me clean up your face as an apology.” I pulled a handkerchief from my back pocket and reached out to her, but she snatched it away from me, scratching me in the process. Thankfully, it didn’t bring blood or break the skin enough for the zombie fluid to get into my system. We weren’t sure if that would be enough to turn someone, but none of us wanted to take a chance.
“I don’t need your apologies or your pity.” She proceeded to wipe the blood off of her face, rushing to get to the library. I could tell that she wanted to get back home to get away from me at this point. I felt horrible knowing she hated me right now. She flung the handkerchief back at me and turned abruptly to head to the library. I hurried to follow her silently, wiping my face as I went.
The next few minutes were the most stressful of my entire life. My heart raced faster than a NASCAR driving down the track. No matter how many times I had to do this, the act was always the same: my heart would beat erratically as I prayed and wished that my scent wouldn’t be stronger than the blood’s, they wouldn’t be able to tell that my movements weren’t zombie-esque, and I wouldn’t get lightheaded from the stench coming from my clothes. I was always so certain that my heart would give me away and seal my doom, but it never happened. As I shut the heavy library door behind me, I was able to calm my heart down just a bit. The next obstacle was checking out this place for any undead that could be lurking in the shadows.
Reagan signaled for me to check the left half of the library as she checked the right half. Sweeping through the bookshelves, tables, and cabinets, we came across as trained for this type of thing. If surviving this apocalypse didn’t make us professionals, I’m not sure what would. Hell, we should qualify for any job once this was all over, in my opinion. The only thing missing was Brantley. We were at our strongest with the three of us working together. Reagan and I had never worked alone before and, if truth be told, I was nervous it wouldn’t work the same way.
The library was oddly quiet, even for post-apocalypse. Dust lay heavily on all the shelves and tables, undisturbed in God knows how long. Not a fingerprint rested upon the silent books, not a footstep had walked across the decorative rugs that lay on the floors. Not even the zombies had been in here in years, maybe never. Astonishment washed over me as I caressed the spines of the nearest books. This was probably the only place in the whole city that was left untouched and it gave the library a magical, almost eerie feeling to it. This would be the best place for us to be. This library was probably a one in a million place, one of only a handful that lay untouched.
Footsteps sounded off to my right, somewhere behind the rows and rows of bookshelves surrounding me on all sides. I backed myself up against one of them to protect at least one of my blind spots. I slowly and quietly unsheathed my knife from my hip and clutched it to my chest while my heart started racing again. I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer in case the big man upstairs was listening.
“Morgan? Where are you?” Reagan whispered as the footsteps got closer. I dropped my hand that held the knife and breathed a sigh of relief. Her head popped around the corner of the bookcase that I was leaning up against. Her face was contorted by worry and what could have been fear.
“Yeah,” I gasped, struggling to catch my breath. Fear had just about caused me to pass out from holding it.
She came to stand beside me, taking the knife from my hand and sheathing it for me. “Find anything?” she asked, placing her hand in mine. Her hands were soft even being without lotion for years. It was warm and pleasurable to have her contact. I wanted to do so many things with this, but held off. I didn’t need to do anything with it.
“No.”
“You feeling alright?” Her expression turned to pure worry and concern instantly. I didn’t know she would ever be worried about me, especially after I had hurt her out in the alleyway. I felt special, and happy.
“Yeah. You took me by surprise, is all. I was in my own world.” I cleared my throat to rid myself of the lump that had formed there. I felt like I would cry from the near-heart attack and her affection for me. I didn’t want to, but damn the feelings she was giving me…
“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to. It’s all clear on my side.”
“Here, too.”
“So what all do we need? You said maps, but maps of what?”
“Anything we can carry. I really think we should map out a route to the countryside to find whoever powers the blue light in the night sky. If that doesn’t turn out good, we need to keep going. We need to make sure we don’t get lost somewhere.”
“You think what we’ll find won’t be good?” She looked me hard in the face, looking for any indication that I might be hiding something.
“I don’t want to hope that it’s a good sign. We just need to be prepared or my dad won’t go for it. That is, if he even agrees to do it in the first place.” I walked off in search of the reference section to find any and every map they had here. I hoped that someone hadn’t beaten me to it years ago when the outbreak first happened. That would’ve been like signing our death certificate. Those maps were our only hope. We would surely die in this city if we didn’t have it.
To my immense relief, the maps were still there. There were ones specific to different regions of New York, maps of the entire state, maps of adjacent states, and a couple road atlases of the entire country. Reagan looked at me, smiling with a twinkle in her eyes, as I grabbed everything I could carry. My heart soared at this discovery. This place had everything we needed, except for food. We could do so much with the resources here.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her pulling off her blood-soaked shirt, followed by her spaghetti strap. I looked up at her only for her to grab my face in her hands and lock lips with me. I gasped with surprise before pulling away to pull my shirts off as well. This is what I’d been dreaming of and wanting for the past year even though I refused to give in. This was happening now. And I wasn’t about to let it pass me by.
The hunger in her eyes was more than apparent to me as I dove in for more kissing. Her lips were supple and inviting to me as I fought to g
et the rest of her clothes off of her. I had never done this before with another woman, but four years was far too long to wait. Nothing was going to stop me this time from consuming myself with passion for her, not even my own reservations about this. The ache needed to be dulled no matter what the cost. I could deal with the emotional repercussions later.
We screwed repeatedly until we were too tired to keep our eyes open any longer. We passed out into a sweet, satisfied sleep that was consumed with the replays of our sexual acts.
Chapter 10
Morgan laid there sleeping so peacefully; the first time in a long time that she has been able to. An hour of stress relief was just enough to wipe the worry from her face as she dreamt of a place far better than this. She snored ever so slightly and I smiled to myself. She was the cutest at times like these. I couldn’t help but want her more. I was ready to take her with me everywhere, fully giving myself over to her.
Many emotions were playing out in my mind at the moment, but boredom was the one that won. I stood up slowly, attempting not to wake her up, and redressed myself. I went about searching the entire library again, just for the fun of it and to pass time. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with myself. I wasn’t going to wake her up just yet. She needed to sleep while she could. Once we left, she would go back to her other self. It was a shame to think about it that way, but that was the reality that we lived in now.
I viewed the dusty shelves with disgust. I hated this part of the apocalypse. Everything was nasty and it irritated my OCD to no end. The worse part was that there weren’t any cleaners worth a damn any longer. I wouldn’t trust the ones I could find with my life. The ammonia and bleach were probably more toxic now or quite the opposite. They could have lost all of their cleaning power sitting for so long. I couldn’t do anything about it and I was forever cranky because of it.
