by M. E. Betts
"Shari?" she heard Anthony say from behind her as he entered the room, "do you know if your friends had any signal flares?"
"No," Shari said without shifting her gaze from the window, "I don't think either of them did. Is that what that light is?"
"Yeah," Anthony said, "it's a parachute flare. I mean, don't get your hopes up, but there's a good chance it's your friends. It's like we told you--we haven't seen living people around here for some time, until you guys showed up."
"I don't know where they'd have gotten that thing," Shari said, pointing at the flare. "Unless they picked it up after they left here."
"There's a good chance they did," Anthony said. "There's an Army surplus store north of here, not too far--probably a few blocks away."
"You think they got it from there?" Shari asked.
"Stands to reason," Anthony replied. "Places like that, they carry a lot of camping and survival gear.
Shari nodded. "You think you can give me directions to that place?"
"I'll do you one better and take you up there myself," Anthony said. "I know the area a lot better than you do."
Shari held his gaze with hers for a moment before she responded. "If you're willing to help me out, then I'm not about to turn you down. I'll be ready before sunup."
It was a quarter after six when Shari opened the door of the trailer where she kept Eva.
"Come on, girl," Shari said, leading the horse out of the trailer. "I bet you're thirsty." She mounted the horse and extended her hand to Anthony, who grasped her hand and awkwardly climbed up behind her.
"I'm not too sure about this," he mumbled as they started down the street. "It feels like I'm going to fall."
"It's easiest if you lean with her as she moves," Shari said. "Just relax a little."
Anthony snorted. "That's easy for you to say. You're used to this, but I've never been on one of these things."
"Don't worry," Shari said. "It shouldn't be a very long ride, if it's as close as you say." She spotted a pond in a park down the block. "I'm gonna stop at that pond so she can have a drink."
They dismounted as they reached the park, allowing the horse to drink her fill as they leaned against the back of a bench, surveying their surroundings while they waited.
"I'm gonna have a smoke," Shari said.
Anthony laughed. "You actually smoke that stuff when you're out, wandering around in this shitstorm we call life nowadays? All types of dangerous shit just waiting to happen?"
Shari shrugged, looking upwards into the brightening sky as she exhaled. "I can still function when I smoke," she said, "as long as I don't overdo it. I guess...I guess you could say I use it to help me get through the day. But all things considered, can you really blame me?"
"Hey," Anthony said, "if it helps keep you sane, with the way things are, then who am I to take that away from you? Long as you don't get us both killed, I got no beef with you."
"Can I ask you something?" Shari asked.
"Shoot."
"Do you think I'm crazy? I mean, after what happened last night?"
Anthony grimaced, jamming his hands into his pockets as he turned toward the pond. "I don't know if I know you well enough to answer that question."
"I'm only asking--" She paused, rolling her eyes as she continued. "I'm only asking because...I guess if I was going to start hallucinating, I'd at least want to know for sure that's what I'm doing."
Anthony glanced back briefly over his shoulder as Shari. "You're asking if I think anyone was there, on the roof?"
"Yeah."
He shook his head as he turned to face her. "No. I don't think there was."
Shari lowered her head, looking down at her boots as she spoke. "That sucks," she whispered. "I don't want to be going crazy."
Anthony shrugged. "At least you're not the worst kind of crazy."
"Maybe not," Shari said as she mounted Eva, "but that's not really saying a lot." Anthony climbed up behind her, and they continued northward. Shari's gaze moved across the horizon before her, looking for high ground. She spotted a watertower ahead of her, to her right. "Do you know the quickest way to get to that water tower?" she asked.
"Keep going this way," Anthony said. "Turn right at the next stop light." He tensed his shoulders, then let out a loud, forceful sigh.
Shari laughed quietly. After a few moments of silence, she spoke up again. "You think of it every time you see a stoplight, too?" she asked. "Not just the stop lights, though--neon signs that don't light up anymore, the sound of traffic, airplanes, kids playing--the lawnmowers that woke us up at seven in the morning on a Saturday. All the little things that made up such a big part of our lives. Things we barely noticed most of the time. And all things that don't mean shit anymore."
Anthony nodded behind her. "Every time I see a stop light," he muttered as Shari turned right and approached the watertower. "So you're really planning on climbing up there?" he asked.
"It's an invaluable vantage point," Shari said. "It would be far from the first time lately that I've climbed one of those things. And," she added, eyeing the platform at the top of the tower as she dismounted, "I figure with all that's going on, now's as good a time as any to lose my fear of heights."
She began her ascent up the ladder, looking steadily upward as she climbed. She reached the end of the ladder, climbing onto the metal ledge that encircled the widest part of the water tower. She sat on the ledge, leaning back against the cool metal of the wall as she gazed through her binoculars. She didn't see much at first as she panned slowly across the area. The next block seemed fairly clear, other than a few isolated zombies wandering the streets. As she looked further out toward the horizon, however, she saw what appeared to be two solid blocks of undead. In the middle of the crowd, she saw a large, silver sheet flapping in the brisk morning air. As she looked more closely, she realized that something had been painted onto the sheet with black paint.
She continued gazing through the lenses, waiting for the wind to blow the right way for her to make out what it was that had been painted onto the makeshift flag. She glimpsed a single letter for a moment before the wind whipped the flag once into a pattern of ripples, obscuring its surface once again.
S, she thought. That was an S...but what else? She waited for almost a minute, breathing shallowly as she sat perfectly still, until the wind whipped the flag straight long enough for Shari to take in the entirety of its message. Shari, someone had painted in capital letters across the top, below which was a crude skull and crossbones. "It's them!" she said aloud, an abrupt giggle bubbling up from her and escaping her lips as she began her descent to the Earth. "It's them," she told Anthony as she reached the bottom of the ladder. "There's a flag out there, a homemade flag, and it says 'Shari' on it. They're letting me know they're surrounded, but alive."
"Surrounded?" Anthony repeated.
"Oh, yeah," Shari said as she mounted the horse, "I forgot to mention that it looks like they're smack-dab in the middle of a herd of zombies that must have a diameter of at least two blocks."
"Oh," Anthony said, scratching his head. "Back to the station then, 'cause I'm gonna have to have a real big breakfast if we're going to go wading into there."
"What you need," Phoebe said, "is a flamethrower."
Anthony snorted. "And where are we supposed to get one of those?"
Phoebe patted the backpack beside her. "It's all right here," she said. "Or the plans for it, at any rate."
"Okay," Shari said, "I'm not even gonna ask why it is that you have instructions for making a flamethrower, I'm just gonna be glad that you have such resources at your disposal."
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Believe it or not, I didn't have them before the world went to shit. I printed out as much stuff as I could the first few days after it started. I wasn't sure how long there would be internet, or power--I wanted to be prepared to cobble some shit together if I had to."
"Makes sense," Shari said. "I suppose the internet's as good as gone."
>
Phoebe shook her head. "No, it didn't really go anywhere. The ISPs are gone, but it's only a matter of time before whatever survivors are left have things up and running again. It's just a matter of networking, namely knowing how to tap into the networks." She grinned. "And that's no sweat for someone like me!"
"Okay," Anthony prodded, "you were saying something about a flamethrower?"
"Oh," Phoebe said, "right. Yeah, I'll look over my notes. I think I should be able to piece it together for the most part out of stuff we have here, but you'll need to find a CO2 tank."
Anthony nodded. "I'll look at the coffeeshop across the street. Should be one there, I doubt anyone else has looted a CO2 tank."
"Anything else we can do?" Shari asked.
"Just peace and quiet, so I can focus," Phoebe said as she rummaged through her backpack. "You two work on finding that tank. I'll let you know if I need anything else."
It was almost noon when Shari and Anthony set out again, this time with Phoebe's newly constructed flamethrower in tow.
"Okay," Anthony said, leading Shari toward a shed on the west side of the lot, "so this is what we're gonna do...there's an elementary school about a five-minute walk from here, right? And past the school, there's a park. The Army surplus store is on the far side of the park from the school. It's one story, so I figure that if we can get up to the roof, we'll have a good view of the area, and we'll go from there."
"How do you propose we get up there?" Shari asked.
Anthony swung open the door of the shed. "Ladder," he said.
"What ladder?" Shari asked, pointing to an object in the far right corner of the shed. "That ladder? We're carrying that ladder for three blocks? I'm sure we can find one in a garage or something, somewhere closer to the school than that."
"Yeah," Anthony said. "I'm sure we can, too...but where, exactly? Do you really wanna go scavenge random houses and buildings, hoping they have a fifteen-foot ladder? Not knowing who might be in those buildings?"
"Alright," Shari said. "I get it. Help me lift this thing." They each picked up an end of the ladder, maneuvering it out of the shed.
"Thanks again," Shari said as they started northward, ladder in tow. "I don't know what I'd have done without you and Phoebe. Hopefully, that thing'll make it easier to cut through the crowd," she said, nodding toward the flamethrower and tank on Anthony's back. "How are you holding up, anyway? Now you have to carry that thing, plus half a ladder."
Anthony shrugged ahead of her. "I'll be okay," he said. "Good thing I'm a pretty big guy, huh?"
"Yeah," Shari said, grinning, "I'd noticed."
"Ha!" Anthony laughed, smirking back over his shoulder at her. "You getting an eyeful back there? It's okay, you can stare if you want to."
They heard the muted, irregular footsteps of a slower, older zombie coming from the right. As they turned to look, an undead teenage female exited a driveway, accelerating to a slow, awkward jog when she sensed the presence of the living.
"Hold up," Anthony said, setting down his end of the ladder. He strode to the undead girl, tripped her, buried the blade of his machete into the base of her skull, and strode back to the ladder all in the space of less than ten seconds. "Moving on," he said as he and Shari lifted the ladder and continued down the street.
"At least there shouldn't be too many of them," Shari said. "The undead are all concentrated right around that place, from what I saw on the water tower. It'll be a cake walk until we get there, and then it'll turn into a shitstorm."
"Maybe, maybe not," Anthony said. "Let's hope that most of them are on the far side of the school. It's narrow, but fairly long...if I had to guess, I'd say probably about fifty yards. So I'm hoping that most of the undead will be to the opposite side of it. We might not ever have to be in any real danger, if we're lucky."
"Here's hoping," Shari said. They trudged onward, taking in their surroundings as they went. "I really appreciate you coming with me--"
"I know," Anthony said, chuckling, "because you've said it at least half a dozen times already today."
"I wasn't done," Shari said. "I appreciate it, but I really hope nothing happens to you. They're my friends, and you didn't really have to help. If anything went wrong, I'd feel responsible."
"Relax," Anthony said. "Don't worry about it. I'm a grown-up, and I made the decision to help you." He snorted. "To be honest with you, I just want to do what I can to see two more people survive. Doesn't matter who they are, so long as they ain't zombies or sadists. I can't stomach the thought of the whole human race going extinct, or even worse--leaving it to the sadists." He shook his head, his eyes on the road straight ahead of him. "I can't stomach it at all. Gotta help people--real people-- whenever I can. I think back on all the assholes from the old world who I couldn't stand, the ones who I might have thought twice before pissing on them if they were on fire. And even those ones--" He uttered a faint laugh. "I even hope the best for those douchebags. I know, when I think about it, that I'd kill a sadist to save one of 'em."
"Isn't it weird?" Shari agreed. "There were all different types of people, and let's be honest--some of them really fucking sucked. I guarantee you, I would have hated one out of three of them. But that was back then, back when they were a dime a billion. It's only a handful of months later, and I can't even remember what most of my all-important beefs with people were even about." She sighed. "At least being on the brink of extinction has brought people closer together."
Anthony glanced back briefly over his shoulder. "So...what do you make of the sadists, then?"
Shari smiled. "I said it brought people closer together, that doesn't include sadists."
"Fair enough," Anthony conceded, focusing on a yard a few doors down where the tall grass rustled clumsily. "I think we got one up there." He and Shari set the ladder on the asphalt.
"I've got this one," Shari said, reaching for her bow and quiver. She raised the bow, nocking her arrow as she stalked nearly noiselessly, toward the yard. As the withered undead male struggled to run toward his intended prey, Shari watched him for a moment, noticing his Bob Marley T-shirt. She held her gaze on him as she released the arrow, which probed the right eye of the former Marley fan. He crumpled to the ground as Shari stalked toward him.
"I hope you're smoking a big ol' joint in Heaven," she said as she wrenched her arrow free from his eye socket, "with Marlely himself." She wiped the arrow on the dead man's shirt and stood, returning it to its quiver and starting back toward Anthony.
"You talking to the undead now?" Anthony teased as he and Shari lifted the ladder and continued toward the school.
"He liked reggae," Shari said with a faint smile that faded into a sullen, unfocused gaze. "I don't like being reminded that they liked things, though. I don't want to know anything about them."
"Me, neither," Anthony muttered ahead of her. "I just exterminate 'em, first-person shooter-style. I figure, hey--I can go ahead and feel guilty about it, but in the end, I'm gonna have to do it anyway, right? If I don't think too hard about who they were, or who they may have been...." He trailed off, taking in the area ahead of him as they approached the intersection just before the elementary school. "So far, so good," he said in a low, hushed growl, referring to the fact that there were no undead visible on the side of the school which they were currently facing. "Let's move in toward that far entrance, the smaller one, as fast as we can," he said, pointing toward the . We'll lean this ladder up against the wall where it's good and low, have us a little rooftop barbeque."
They crossed the street and started across the vast lawn in front of the school, mindful of potential undead lurking behind the wide dwarf conifers dotting the overgrown landscape. "So you were a first-person shooter guy back in the day?" Shari asked, smirking.
"Yeah, I guess," Anthony said, his eyes on the entrance at the far west end of the sprawling school grounds. His lips began to curl into a reluctant grin. "Somethin' wrong with that?"
"No," Shari said, "not really. I n
ever cared for them much, personally."
"So what exactly did you care for?"
"Don't get me wrong," Shari said, "I like the shooting. But I preferred the role-playing games, because they had that and a whole lot more. You know, character building, leveling up with various skills, some of which aren't even weapon-related...." She trailed off, uttering a slight laugh. "I can't help but apply it to survival nowadays. It's like I'm living in an RPG and trying to catch my melee skill up to my sniping, or to sneak in a quick medicine or barter point to bring me up real quick in a pinch or something like that."
Anthony stifled an amused snort as he led the way, his gaze holding steady on the school.
"It's silly, I know," Shari said. "I never said I wasn't a nerd, did I?"
Anthony shrugged. "Just didn't picture you being the type, that's all. You seem a little--I don't know, sophisticated compared to most gamers I've known of."
"Okay," Shari said, "I'll consider that a compliment."
"Alright," Anthony said as they reached the western extremity of the school, "you sure you're ready to do this?"
Shari smirked, rolling her eyes. "Dude, who do you think you're talking to? Keep in mind, me and Daphne are the ones who fought our way up here from Kentucky, remember?" She snickered. "Not everyone was living the good life holed up nice and cozy in a radio station, alright?"
"Alright, alright" Anthony said, "I know you're technically the bigger man, okay? Lay off already. I need you to get ready to climb up there ahead of me."
They leaned the ladder up to the roof and Shari hurried up while Anthony held the base steady. She wandered to the northern edge of the roof while Anthony climbed up behind her, pulling the ladder up after him.
"Holy shit," Shari breathed, gesturing northward. The park that lay between the school and the shopping center to the north was filled shoulder-to-shoulder with undead, and as she looked to the east and west she realized that the entire street itself was packed for at least a block in either direction. "It must be every zombie in the greater Champaign-Urbana area."
