Just Another Day
In the Zombie Apocalypse
Episode 6
L.C. Mortimer
Copyright: L.C. Mortimer
Published: 2017
Publisher: Amazon Kindle
The right of L. C. Mortimer to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.
The continuing story of Alice, Mark, Kyle, and Torrance.
The zombies have come.
Will they survive?
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse is an episodic serial and should be read in order. Each episode ends in a cliffhanger and leads directly into the next story.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
About the Author
More from L.C.
The Haunting of a Ghost
Lost in the Apocalypse
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 1
Alice stood at the door that led to the library basement. She shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be staring at the darkness by herself, but it was time.
It was time to stop being afraid of the dark.
She was a grown-ass woman who had killed. She had fought. She had survived. She was living in the middle of the apocalypse and she wasn’t going to be scared by a basement.
Not this one, anyway.
She flicked on the flashlight and took the first step.
The top stair creaked beneath her weight, but seemed sturdy, so she kept going. Alice tried not to think about the horror movies she’d seen before, tried not to think about scary books or campfire tales that had freaked her out as a child. She was past all that now. She was past the point of fear.
She kept moving.
The smell of mold filled her nostrils and she wondered how long it had been since anyone explored the basement. She bet it had been longer than the librarians would have liked to admit. She bet it had been at least a year, maybe more.
Probably more.
The stairs opened into an unfinished room and she shined the light around. What Alice really wanted to find was a generator. What she really wanted was to get some electricity, some light. She wanted to be able to read and she wanted to be able to turn the heat on because the nights were getting colder.
It was the 21st century. She should be able to be warm in the winter.
Not that it was winter yet. They still had a few months at best, a few weeks at worst. It was only autumn, but sometimes in Kansas, snow came early. Snow didn’t seem to understand the schedule the rest of the world followed.
“No snow before Thanksgiving” wasn’t really something that applied in the Midwest.
Alice had learned this long ago.
She moved the flashlight around. There were some broken bookcases and some boxes, but no generator. Of course not. That would be too lucky. She stepped further into the room and turned in a circle. Dust particles floated in the air and showed each time she moved her flashlight. She tried not to sneeze, but it was no use.
After a brief sneezing fit, she held the flashlight tighter in one hand. She had a crowbar in the other.
There was nothing down here.
All that fear, all that build-up: it was all for nothing. All that stress wondering what lurked in the shadows was for naught. There was just nothing.
She walked over to a wooden chair and sat down. Then Alice closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe she had gotten her hopes up. She should know better by now. She really should. The problem with getting your hopes up is that it’s easy for those dreams to crash.
“Hey,” she heard Mark’s voice, followed by heavy footsteps on the stairs. “What are you doing down here?”
“Nothing.”
“Looking for a generator, huh?”
“Yeah. Stupid, right?” She waved her hand around. “There’s nothing here.”
He came the rest of the way down the stairs and walked over to Alice, then pulled her from the chair. Mark wrapped his arms around her, but she didn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Not over something stupid like this. It was just a generator, but to Alice, it was so much more.
She needed hope right now. She needed something, anything.
Kyle still wasn’t back.
It had been a week.
It had been a week and they had waited, but they both knew it was time to move on. Alice didn’t want to stay in Raven without Kyle and she knew Mark didn’t, either. They had talked about it endlessly and waited much longer than they should have.
They’d searched the town as much as they felt comfortable and a little beyond their own comfort. They’d gone through houses and looked through different abandoned buildings, but there was no sign of Kyle or Torrance.
Where could they have gone?
“It’s time,” Mark said.
“Yeah, I know,” Alice whispered. She had been hoping. If there had been a generator, she would have taken it as a sign the universe wanted them to keep waiting, keep looking.
It was stupid, really. It was a girlish hope that didn’t really matter. The truth was that Kyle was gone and even though she wanted to imagine there was a reason he hadn’t come back to them, Alice could only think of one.
Kyle was dead.
Mark took Alice’s hand and led her up the stairs. They went up a second flight to retrieve their already-packed bags from the room they’d been staying in.
Alice took one last look around at the couches they’d been sleeping on. The small space had been barren and empty when they arrived, and it still was, but it was filled with love now. It was filled with hope. It was filled with their dreams.
The tiny space had been transformed, at some point, and she no longer thought of it as “the upstairs room at the library.”
Instead, Alice had started to think of the room as “home.”
And wasn’t that stupid?
Kyle was gone and soon she would be, too. This library room wasn’t home. None of this was home. She would never have a home again.
With a sigh, she followed Mark out of the little room and down the stairs. They arrived back at the first floor. Soon they’d be on the road. She wasn’t sure where they would go or what they would do, but they’d be together: her and Mark. They’d be together and even though there were only two of them now, she thought that somehow, everything would be all right.
They’d found a car and most of their stuff was already loaded up. They’d found extra guns, extra ammunition, and extra food. They’d found clothes and medications and everything they needed but their friend.
The one thing they needed the most, they had lost, and it hurt.
He lived a good life, Alice thought. He was a good person. Before the apocalypse, Kyle had been a good neighbor and a good friend. He’d always listened to her rant about work and he’d always managed to get her to laugh when she was feeling tense. They hadn’t been close before the undead threw them together, bonding their friendship, solidifying their re
lationship. They hadn’t been close, but then they were closer than family, closer than blood.
And now there was just nothing.
Alice felt numb as she carried one of the duffel bags to the front of the library. They had loaded up almost everything. It was just this bag now, plus two that Mark carried.
“I’m going to miss this place,” Mark said, looking around the library with fondness.
“Not me,” Alice grumbled, even though it wasn’t true. She would miss the library. She just wouldn’t miss the pain she now associated with the place. She now thought of the library as the home where Kyle died, and she hated that she thought that. She hated that idea.
“You love books,” Mark pointed out.
“I just wish our time here had ended differently.”
“I think we both wish that.”
Alice dropped the bag and rubbed her shoulders. She wasn’t cold, but a chill shot through her body.
Sadness.
Depression.
Devastation.
“I just can’t stop thinking about how it must have been when he, you know…” She didn’t want to say it out loud. She didn’t want to say, “When he died.” Somehow, saying the words made it real and there was a part of Alice that didn’t want to admit it could be real.
“Alice,” Mark’s voice was firm. “He’s a trooper. We don’t know anything for certain.”
“He’s got asthma, Mark,” she whispered, as if it was too horrible to speak the words out loud. “What if they ran him down? What if they ripped him apart?”
Mark looked frustrated, like he was tired of reassuring her, and honestly, she was tired of asking him for reassurance. They were both past the point where they could do anything. All they could do now was move on and try not to think about their friend too much. Feeling strong emotions of any kind was a great way to be distracted. When you were distracted, zombies could get the jump on you. Then nothing would matter at all.
Mark turned to reach for the deadbolt so he could unlock the library door, but just as his hand touched the brass, they heard a sound they hadn’t expected: footsteps outside, followed by someone trying to turn the knob. The door was still locked, but someone began shaking and jiggling the doorknob. Then they knocked.
“Hello? Anyone in there?”
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
“You guys in there?”
Chapter 2
Mark twisted the deadbolt, yanked the door open, and wrapped his arms around Kyle.
“You fucker,” he said. “Where the hell have you been?” There was no malice in Mark’s voice. There was no anger, no frustration. His words were harsh, but that’s all they were: words.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle managed to get out, and Alice threw herself into the hug.
“We were so worried,” she said. “We thought you were…well…”
“I know. I know you did. I figured you did, anyway. I’m sorry.” Kyle pulled out of the hug and looked at his friends. Mark noticed the dark circles under Kyle’s eyes, noticed the way his friend’s clothes hung just a little looser than they had before. Whatever Kyle had been through, it hadn’t been easy for him.
“What happened, Kyle?” He asked, but Kyle just shook his head.
“It’s a long story, and if I’m not wrong, you both were just about to leave. I have a place we can go, so let’s go.”
He grabbed one of the bags and Mark and Alice followed him outside. Alice pulled the library door closed behind them. She locked it using the keys they’d found inside at the librarian’s desk, and then pocketed the keys.
Kyle looked at her, almost questioning her choice, but she just shrugged.
“We might want to come back to this place sometime. I’d like for it to not be completely infested with the undead.”
“Someone might break the door down,” Kyle countered. “Maybe it’s better to leave the door unlocked so they don’t do any permanent damage.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Alice said. “I don’t think most people are going to take the time to break down a door. We aren’t all super ninjas like Mark.”
“Hey,” Mark protested lightly. “I’m not a super ninja.”
Alice and Kyle both turned to him, as if they couldn’t believe he’d just talked himself down from such a cool title. Mark ignored them and moved toward the SUV they’d found. It was big, sturdy, and had a half tank of gas. It wouldn’t get them far, but judging by what Kyle was saying, they didn’t have to get far.
“Where we headed, Kyle?” Mark asked.
“Turn right,” he said, and Mark turned right out of the parking spot in front of the library, heading toward houses and wooded areas.
“Kyle?” Alice’s voice was gentle, quiet as she asked.
“Go straight for a bit. At the second intersection, turn left.”
“Kyle,” Alice said again. “What happened?”
“What happened is that Torrance and I found a great place to stay,” he said, almost sounding excited. “We found a lodge at the old campgrounds here. It’s great. It’s big and open and wide.”
“That doesn’t sound like a safe place to stay,” Alice murmured.
“Trust me,” Kyle assured her. “It’s perfect. The walls are thick and there aren’t too many windows. The ones on the first floor are completely boarded up now. We worked on it all week.”
“Why didn’t you come back sooner, Kyle?” Alice asked. Her voice was tense, thick with emotion. Mark knew she was going to start crying soon if Kyle didn’t give her some real answers, but he also sensed his friend didn’t have any to give yet.
That was fine.
That would come with time.
“It’s not that simple,” Kyle said. “I wanted to. I wanted to come find you the next day, but there was a fucking horde surrounding the county clerk’s building.”
“I know,” Alice said dryly. “I ran through that horde.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t get through it. The place we found, it’s across a little lake. I took the canoe back over, but when I got near the building, I saw that the place was still crawling with Z’s. I didn’t want to take any chances.”
Mark exchanged a knowing look with Alice. Kyle was right. The offices had been full of zombies for days. It made sneaking in and out of the library to search for Kyle damn right difficult. In fact, it had been nearly impossible, but they’d done it.
They’d found a way to search for their friend and while Mark definitely understood where Kyle was coming from, he knew Alice wasn’t going to be as understanding.
“We looked for you,” she said. Her voice was nearly a whisper, and dripping with hurt. “We looked for you and we risked our own safety to do it.”
“I’m sorry,” Kyle sounded genuinely remorseful. “I checked every day and finally, it seemed like they were gone. Finally, I thought it was safe to come to you, but it wasn’t.”
“When was this?” Mark asked.
“Two days ago,” Kyle said. “But listen, you guys. Something weird happened.”
That didn’t sound good, didn’t inspire any faith in Mark that this world they were trapped in was improving. Kyle’s words didn’t make him suddenly feel like things were going to get better just because they found their friend.
They had been ready to leave.
Alice and Mark were packed. They had mentally and physically prepared to drive right on out of Raven and never look back. They had been ready, but now things were changing.
Again.
“What happened?” Mark asked. He kept his eyes focused on the road.
“Turn here,” Kyle said, pointing ahead, and Mark turned the steering wheel. There were only a few Infected out today. He and Alice had tried to avoid the damn things as much as possible while Kyle was gone. They were both sad, hurting, tired. Neither one of them wanted to deal with the fuckers.
They didn’t want to deal with the possibility of getting bit and losing someone el
se.
“The Infected were gone when I crossed the lake,” Kyle said. “I got out of the canoe and went through the woods up to the back of the building. There was nothing. It was clear. I was going to go around to the library, going to come and find you guys, but that’s when I saw him.”
“Him?” Alice and Mark said unison.
“There was a zombie on the balcony, on the second floor of the building. You guys, he was just…watching me.”
Mark thought of the week before when they’d been separated. He thought of the creatures that had watched them, waited for them.
“Some of them are different,” Mark muttered.
“We saw some like that,” Alice said. She shivered. Mark knew she was remembering how they’d been locked in the storage shed, how they’d hidden while the Infected ravaged a house nearby. He knew she was thinking of how hard they’d run.
He knew she was thinking of how they’d almost died.
“What did you do, Kyle?” Alice asked softly.
“I went back,” he admitted. He sounded sad, almost embarrassed.
“There’s nothing wrong with being safe,” Mark said quickly.
“I should have just sucked it up,” Kyle muttered. “Not been a pussy.”
“Hey,” Mark spoke again, his voice harsher this time. “There is nothing wrong with being safe.”
Kyle just shook his head. He pointed toward the road. There was an Infected blocking the way, but they were in an SUV. Mark just gunned it. They hit the body with a loud thud and kept going.
“Gross,” Alice muttered.
“Really? ‘Gross’? You’ve seen a lot grosser in the last couple of weeks.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just…you could have gone around, you know?”
“No time for that today, sweetheart,” Mark said. It was the way he normally spoke, but Alice blushed. Was she wondering if Kyle knew what had happened between them? Was she embarrassed about it? Ashamed? Mark didn’t think so. He didn’t think Alice would be weird about that. Maybe she was just embarrassed at him disagreeing with her. Mark wasn’t sure.
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