Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse (Episode 6)

by L. C. Mortimer

  “Just in case,” Mark said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Chapter 5

  Despite her injured ankle, Torrance radiated strength. Alice liked it. She liked knowing their new teammate was a tough bitch. There was no room for weakness in the zombie apocalypse.

  Timothy had been like that. Alice tried to push the thought from her head, but she couldn’t. How long had it been since she’d thought of her brother? When the infection first began, it had been every minute, every hour. Then it had been every couple of hours.

  Since she and Mark started sleeping together, it had been once a day.

  Or less.

  She hadn’t thought of her brother in days.

  For some people, that might seem like nothing, but to Alice, it was a lifetime. She felt like she was betraying his memory by not thinking about him, by focusing on herself. Wasn’t that stupid?

  Alice sat down next to Torrance. Mark and Kyle were busy unloading the duffels, but she needed a moment to breathe.

  “Are you okay?” Torrance asked. She looked concerned.

  “No,” Alice whispered.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Alice shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. She never wanted to talk about it. Hadn’t that always been her problem, though? She shut down when she should be opening up. She closed her lips when she should be opening them. She should be sharing her feelings with the people around her, with the people who loved her.

  Instead, Alice pushed them out.

  She locked her friends out of her life, out of her heart, and she pocketed the key.

  Alice was tired of that.

  Mark and Kyle were in the other room now. They wouldn’t be able to overhear. Not that it mattered if they did, at this point. They’d been to hell and back together. A few more disappointing secrets didn’t matter.

  “My brother died,” Alice said. “Before the zombies, before the apocalypse.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Torrance said quietly. She closed her eyes, and Alice knew in that moment that Torrance had lost someone, too. Maybe it was someone closer than a brother. Maybe it had been more recently than her own loss, which really wasn’t that recent at all.

  “I’ve never thought I should be able to find happiness because he died before he got to grow up.” Alice couldn’t quite believe she was saying the words, but what did she have to lose? She had lost everything already, except for Mark and Kyle. She had lost everything that was important to her except for those two men.

  She didn’t have dignity anymore.

  She didn’t have embarrassment.

  She might as well be honest.

  “That doesn’t seem very fair to yourself,” Torrance said carefully. “Do you think that’s what he would have wanted for you?”

  Alice shook her head. It was the same thing Mark had said to her a million times before, but somehow, she couldn’t shake free of the guilt. Timothy had died and she had lived. His life had ended and hers had gone on.

  “My son died,” Torrance said after a long minute.

  Alice’s heart clenched in her chest and she felt like she was going to throw up. Yeah, Torrance had definitely lost someone closer than a brother. The way Torrance’s eyes closed as she spoke the words showed Alice just how much it still hurt her.

  “I’m sorry,” Alice whispered.

  “Me, too.”

  “How do you deal with the pain?”

  “I don’t. Isn’t that stupid?” Torrance shook her head. “I try not to think about him because thinking of him hurts.”

  “And that just makes you feel worse,” Alice understood. “Because then it’s like you’re denying him, it’s like you’re denying his existence.”

  “Yeah,” Torrance looked surprise at Alice’s comment. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s like, if I think about him, I feel sad. Devastated. Lonely. Then, if I don’t think about him, it’s like I’m this shitty mom who doesn’t deserve those memories.”

  “You’re not a shitty mom.”

  “No offense, but you have no idea what kind of mom I am.”

  “If you were shitty, you wouldn’t care,” Alice pointed out, and Torrance didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t really anything else to say. Words weren’t going to fix either one of them this time. Words weren’t going to make things better.

  Still, it was nice to have someone who understood her pain, who understood her misery and her situation, so Alice sat there with Torrance for a long time, each of them trapped with their own memories.

  Each of them wishing something could change.

  Chapter 6

  Mark pulled a length of rope out of the duffel bag.

  Kyle handed him a pot.

  “You sure about this?” Kyle asked. He looked skeptical, but Mark just smiled.

  “Trust me,” he said, and hung the pot on the rope. He tied a few knots and hung another pot. They were close enough to make noise, but far enough apart that they weren’t clustered together in one spot. The two of them repeated this process of knotting the rope, then hanging metal objects on it. They made two ropes like this.

  At the end of the day, hanging pots and pans on ropes wasn’t going to keep zombies out. The ropes didn’t have to, though. They just had to function as an alarm system so they didn’t have to sleep in shifts out here in the woods.

  If zombies wanted to break in, chances were they’d be loud enough to wake the dead, anyway. Their groans were enough to rip both Mark and Alice from their sleep, and it had been a long week of tossing and turning over at the library.

  Out here in the wilderness, out here in the woods, Mark hoped they would sleep better. He hoped things would be quieter.

  He also hoped they wouldn’t have intruders.

  The pots and pans would work to notify them of anyone trying to break in: infected or not.

  Mark was skeptical at best and pessimistic at worst and he didn’t want to get his hopes up about the lodge. It was great, if he was honest with himself. It was better than he had hoped for when Kyle said he’d found a spot.

  It just seemed too good to be true.

  They finished with the ropes and hung them above the front door and the back door in the kitchen. That one worried Mark a bit because it was so far from the bedrooms, which were at the opposite end of the lodge.

  “Maybe we should think about blocking off this door,” Mark said.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Kyle lowered his voice. “I didn’t want to freak out the girls, but I don’t know if we’ll hear anyone breaking in this one. Even with the ‘alarm,’” he made air quotes as he spoke. “It’ll be tough to hear. I don’t think any of us are particularly deep sleepers, but it’s better to be safe.”

  “We’ll talk about it more tomorrow,” Mark decided. “It’s already getting dark. It’s too late to do anything tonight.”

  They headed back into the main room. Streams of light flickered into the room despite the boarded-up windows, but the room was still fairly dark. There was a coffee table that had a few candles on it and that offered a fair amount of light.

  “Clever,” Mark nodded toward them.

  “Didn’t know how hard it would be to find batteries,” Kyle admitted. “So we gathered up the candles we could find. Torrance knows how to make more.”

  “It’s not hard,” she piped up. “Used to make them with my kid all the time. It’s a fun, easy project. The biggest challenge here is going to be finding a way to heat the wax so that it melts, but we’ve got the fireplace, so it shouldn’t be an issue.”

  “Glad you’ve got that skill,” Mark said. “It’ll come in handy.”

  “What do you use for wax?” Alice asked. “It’s not like there’s a craft store around.”

  “No, but there are crayons around. They don’t make the best candles, but it’s easy to melt crayons and use the wax for candles. They still burn and give off light. They just don’t smell that great.”

  “Goo
d thing we aren’t planning on sitting around sniffing wax then,” Mark grumbled, and closed the front door. He locked it and was careful to duck under the burglar alarm he and Kyle had constructed, then he came and sat down with the rest of the group.

  One of the weird things about the apocalypse was how much free time they really had. They could work all day and still have time to talk or read or play a damn board game. It was weird and Mark wasn’t quite sure how he felt about all of that.

  He didn’t think he should be comfortable with the idea of just sitting around, yet somehow, it was nice to have some time to just think. It was nice to not have to race off to work or social commitments. It was nice to just be able to have some time to think.

  “How much have you explored the area around the lodge?” Mark asked.

  “Not as much as we should have,” Torrance admitted. Mark could see her blush in the candlelight. She was embarrassed to have gotten hurt, he guessed, and she was probably ashamed of herself for holding the group back.

  She wasn’t holding them back.

  “It’s not your fault,” Mark said. “Shit happens.”

  “Accidents are what happen when you aren’t paying enough attention,” she countered, and Mark couldn’t argue with her, so he let it drop.

  “Most of the cabins are between the lodge and the main part of the lake,” Kyle said. “There are two that are behind the lodge, but the lake curves around, so they’re still pretty close to the beach. Basically, anyone or anything that comes from the water is going to encounter a couple of cabins before they make it to the lodge.”

  “If they make it this far,” Mark said.

  “Do you think we should set up traps? Alarms?” Alice asked. She had her hands in her lap and was curled up on the end of the sofa. She looked like she should have a blanket on her lap and a glass of wine in her hand. She looked like a warm summer day in the midst of winter, and Mark loved her for that.

  “Yes,” Torrance said. “Absolutely.”

  “I doubt anything is going to wander up from the lake,” Mark said. “Might be a better use of our time to secure the area coming from the road,” but Torrance shook her head.

  “I’m not worried about zombies coming from the lake, but what about people? What about other survivors? It would be stupid not to secure the area between the lodge and the lake.”

  “I think Mark is right about where we should start,” Kyle said. He stood and paced, walking back and forth in front of the empty fireplace. “Torrance is right, too. We will need to do something about the lake. I don’t think there are going to be many people crossing it, but it’s a big lake. You never know. We should start by securing the area coming from the road, though.”

  “Should we block it off?” Alice asked. “Won’t that draw more attention? Like, ‘hey, don’t come down this super-secret road’?”

  “Even if we can’t make it look like no one lives here, we can block off vehicles from being able to enter,” Torrance said helpfully.

  “Until we’re ready to leave. Then we’ll be unable to get a vehicle out,” Mark pointed out.

  “Oh yeah. Fuck. You’re totally right. I didn’t think of that.”

  “I’m tired,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “Anyone else tired?”

  “Just go to bed,” Alice suggested helpfully.

  “No,” Kyle was pacing faster now and looking more and more frustrated. “I’m tired,” he said. “I just want some normalcy. I just want to chill. We’re in this super amazing fucking lodge and what are we doing? Talking strategy for when monsters come to get us. It’s not like we’re talking about what to do if monsters happen to come. We’re talking about what we’re actually going to do when they do come because we know they’re going to find us eventually.”

  The room fell silent as Kyle ran his hands through his hair.

  He was exasperated, worn out.

  He needed to get some rest or he was going to break down and do something really fucking stupid.

  Mark had seen it all before. He knew the signs. Still, he felt powerless to help his friend in this moment. Kyle was verbalizing what they were all feeling. He was reaching out in the only way he knew how. The kid had never been through anything as tough as this before – none of them had – and he had reached his breaking point.

  “We can’t keep running,” Kyle said. “We ran and we ran and there’s just so many of them.”

  “The world has changed,” Torrance’s voice was almost a whisper. “The world is different now. This is just what it’s like. We can fight or we can die, Kyle. Which would you rather do? Would you rather suck it up and be a man or would you rather cower like the scared little boy you are inside?”

  Mark sucked in a breath at Torrance’s harsh words.

  The chick had balls.

  He’d never talk to Kyle that way, but judging by the way Kyle’s eyes widened and his back straightened, Mark knew it was the right thing to say. He knew Torrance had reached Kyle at the moment he needed it most.

  He knew what she said rang true with the guy.

  “I’m not a scared little boy,” Kyle said finally. “But I am tired.”

  “Then let’s go to bed,” Torrance said. “And we’ll finish talking about this tomorrow.”

  She got up and reached for him. Kyle quickly scurried to her side, slipped an arm around her, and helped her hobble across the room and to the staircase that led to the second floor.

  Without another word, Kyle and Torrance went upstairs and disappeared down the hallway.

  “Holy shit,” Alice said after they’d gone. “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “She’s tough as nails, calling him out like that.”

  “She’s the only one who could,” Mark said. “If I called him out, he’d think I was trying to play the alpha. If you did, he’d think you were jealous of Torrance. She put him in his place and she did it without being overly mean to him.”

  “I think she’s good for him,” Alice commented.

  “I think she’s good for all of us.”

  Chapter 7

  Kyle woke up with a sore neck and a sore back and a sore heart.

  Worst of all, he woke up with a bad attitude because he knew he’d been acting crazy the night before. Torrance was right. They couldn’t change the world around them. Electricity and civilization wasn’t coming back, so they had to deal with what they had. They had to do the best with what was around them.

  Kyle would start with making breakfast.

  They hadn’t finished unpacking all of the new food supplies the night before, so he’d start with that. Despite the fact that he hadn’t found his friends for a week after their separation, he’d stumbled across a couple of empty houses and had scavenged enough food to make the kitchen of the lodge look a little less abandoned.

  Kyle and Torrance had organized the kitchen together. Almost everything they had was dried food like cereal and crackers, but they’d been lucky and found some canned goods, as well.

  And a can opener.

  For some reason, the lodge’s can opener was electric, so one of the first things Kyle had gone specifically looking for was a non-electric opener. He could use a knife, of course. He’d learned to long ago, but he knew there was a huge risk of slipping and cutting his hand or finger.

  He was sure Torrance could stitch him up if he needed her to, but he wasn’t about to put her in that position. Besides, the risk of infection was too great, and despite his friends’ assumption that he was a dead man walking, Kyle wasn’t interested in ending his life.

  Not yet.

  Not today.

  He started unpacking the food Alice and Mark had brought to add to the collection. He sorted it, careful to put the items with the earliest expiration dates at the front of the shelves. He was happy with what they’d brought. Kyle and his friends might not have the most well-rounded diet, but they certainly weren’t about to go hungry.

  Not
with this much food.

  He wondered how they’d deal with winter. It would be here soon. The weather had already started to grow colder. His lungs had burned when he woke up in the morning and breathed in the cold air too quickly. Kyle had snuggled lower beneath his thin blanket.

  That would be the next thing he went looking for: better blankets.

  When he finished sorting the food, he opened a box of cereal and ate directly from the box. There was no point in dirtying a bowl when he’d have to haul water from the lake to clean it. They would worry about that sort of thing later. Today, Kyle just wanted simple. Today, Kyle wanted something easy.

  Mark and Alice got up soon, followed by Torrance, who was hobbling a little less. She managed to make it carefully down the stairs on her own, which was a huge improvement. He was filled with relief when he saw her. When she first got injured, he worried her ankle was broken. There was nothing they could do about that, so he helped her wrap it and he massaged her each day to minimize the pain.

  It was good to see her moving around.

  “What’s on the agenda for today?” Torrance asked, grabbing a granola bar. She grabbed a barstool and sat on it to eat her food.

  “I want to see the area we’ve got here, look for fences, terrain. Is there a place we can plant a garden? What are some of the weak spots when it comes to security? I want to know all of that.”

  “I can show you everything I’ve found,” Kyle said. “No problem.”

  “I’ll come, too,” Alice said. “That is, if it’s okay with you.” She looked at Torrance. “If you need help, I can stay.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Torrance waved her off. “I’m reading all of the books Kyle pilfered from the library.”

  “What?” Alice asked, raising her eyebrows. “Stealing? Really? I’m shocked,” she winked at Kyle, who snickered.

  “Borrowing,” he said. “I was borrowing them. I’ll return them.”

  “When will you return them?” Alice asked.

  “When the apocalypse is over,” he said simply, eliciting an eye-roll from her. He gave her a friendly jab with his elbow. “Come on, fusser. Let’s go see what we’re working with.”