by Alex Apostol
“We can’t just leave him here!” Gretchen said in a shaky voice. “He needs our help.”
Something changed in Lonnie. His eyes were overtaken by that wild, crazed look again. “People who want to die can’t be helped!” he yelled from deep within his chest. It caught everyone off guard as his voice echoed throughout the vast, empty store. “So do yourself a favor and fucking forget about him!”
Gretchen’s mouth hung open as she looked at Lonnie, tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. He turned and walked off to leave the group staring in bewilderment. Gretchen looked to Gale, but all Gale did was shrug.
“Wonder what that was all about,” Mitchell said in his awkward, fast way of talking that made him stumble over his words.
He said what everyone else had thought silently to themselves and it made Gretchen roll her misty eyes. They’d obviously pushed a button for Lonnie, one of his many, but a deeply rooted and highly sensitive one. Gretchen’s mind wandered away from the dark scene in the small enclosure of the Wal-Mart pharmacy and over to the brooding man in the distance, ready to disappear into the shadows of the empty aisles.
For the first time, she thought of Lonnie as more than the asshole who appointed himself God and leader of the group. He wasn’t simply put on Earth to take zombies down and boss people around. He had a history before the dead destroyed everything—a life, a home, a family—and for some reason, she desperately wanted to know what it was.
Mitchell spoke again to everyone’s dismay. “Is there like a history of suicide in his family or something? Did he know someone or…”
“Just shut up already,” Rowan grumbled as his almond eyes narrowed.
“Got it. Sorry,” Mitchel stammered and backed away.
Lee knelt down in front of the man in the chair and tipped back a water bottle to his dry lips. Somewhere in the foggy unconscious of the man’s mind, he was grateful. Luke warm water dripped down his chin and neck.
The cool sensation seemed to revive him. His dark eyes opened fully and began to dart back and forth. He jumped back, scooting the chair away from the broad, muscle-toned Irishman in front of him. His hazy gratitude quickly transformed into enraged paranoia.
“What the fuck? Who the fuck are you people?” he rambled off, panic-stricken. “I don’t have anything, I swear.” His breathing sped up until it wheezed in his chest. He coughed intensely.
Lee held out a hand to him, but the man flinched away from it. “It’s all right,” Lee said, reaching out again. “Nobody is going ta hurt ya.”
The man couldn’t keep his eyes still for more than a second. When he saw Lonnie double back around with a determined stride and red face, they widened until they were ready to pop out of their sockets.
“What’s your name? Where are you from?” Lonnie demanded as he stood over the hunched, frail man.
Wheezing turned to sobbing. The black man lowered his elbows to his knees and rested his head in his hands. He didn’t hold back as his entire body shook up and down. Tears and spit covered his palms. He shook his head. “Why didn’t you just let me die?” His voice was muffled through his hands. When no one answered he shouted again. “Why didn’t you let me die!”
Lonnie bent over at the waist with his hands on his knees, gun slung around his back, so that his face was level with the scared young man’s. “What. Is. Your. Name?” Lonnie demanded.
The man peeled himself away from his hands. His red-rimmed eyes looked up at Lonnie as he tried to catch his breath. “Dan…” he said in between sobs. “Anderson…Dan Anderson from Chicago.”
X.
The group gathered in one corner of the pharmacy while Dan Anderson sat in the other.
“We should leave him,” Lonnie stuck to his guns. “Someone like that is only going to slow us down, drain us of supplies, and get us killed.”
“How can you be so heartless?” Gretchen whispered so Dan couldn’t hear. “He’s obviously been through a lot. He doesn’t really want to die. No one wants that for themselves. He just thinks he had no other option.”
“How can you know that?” Rowan asked with his hands on his hips, his thumb flicking his belt loop. “I mean, he looks pretty miserable to me.”
“Look, we’re all miserable,” Gale said with her hand thrust out, as if to display the sad bunch of misfits, poster children for the definition of wretched, pathetic, and miserable. “But that doesn’t mean we should abandon someone when there are so few people left in the world.”
“I don’t know,” Carolyn said slowly. “How’d he get all the way here from Chicago? And why? Just to off himself? It’s weird, don’t you think?”
Lonnie sighed. He turned away and then turned back again as if he was trying to keep a tally in his head of everyone’s misguided votes. He rubbed at the back of his thick neck. So far it was Gretchen and Gale yay, Carolyn and himself nay. Rowan would do whatever he said. Lee probably wouldn’t answer either way. He couldn’t care less about anything except his medical supplies. If the Irishman wasn’t such an intimidating figure who watched the group’s back vigilantly, Lonnie would have left him for dead long ago. That meant Mitchell was the only one left to voice his opinion.
“What do you think, dipshit?” Lonnie asked the kid.
“Uh…” Mitchell stalled as he looked around at the group, their faces long and withered from the harshness of their new way of life. “I think you talk a lot about preserving humanity and repopulation and it’d be counter intuitive of you to left him here to die.”
Mitchell made a valid point, but something still didn’t feel right deep in Lonnie’s gut. If the new guy was bad news, he could end up killing someone in the group—multiple people, in fact. That would be even more counter intuitive, or whatever Mitchell said. “I still think we should get what we need and go.” His face was solid, like his stance, his gunned gripped firmly in his hands.
A collective sigh rose to the ceiling.
“Well, I’m not leaving without him,” Gretchen said as she crossed her arms and planted her feet.
Lonnie closed his eyes, turned his face upwards, and took a calming breath. “Gretch, you’re killing me,” he whined.
When he opened his eyes again she was still standing firmly next to the lip balm and condoms. Her pink lips were puckered together in the cutest pouty face Lonnie had ever seen. “Fine,” he gave in quickly. “But I’m not babysitting suicidal Dan, over there. That’s going to be your job and fucking Green Giant’s. Got it?” His thumb was hitched over his shoulder at Lee, who was leaning against one of the white pharmacy shelves with his arms folded.
Gretchen didn’t smile with relief or thank Lonnie for his decision. She didn’t even move.
“But the kid’s on a fucking trial run,” Lonnie called over his shoulder as he walked away. “If he tries anything stupid or attempts to off himself again, we leave him behind. That’s it.”
“Whatever,” Gretchen exhaled.
She relaxed her stance once Lonnie and Rowan disappeared to ransack what was left in the aisles to the right of the pharmacy, which were the over-the-counter drugs, home and garden, and toys. She heard his faint voice ask his companion if Play-Doh was edible and shook her head. “Idiot,” she breathed.
“Thanks for that,” Dan Anderson spoke out to the blonde woman who vouched for him. He rested his back against the chair with his legs sprawled out.
Gretchen let herself smile as she took a few steps forward. Her stomach felt warm and her heart beat fast, a result of sticking up for herself and getting Dan admitted into the group. They saved a life. But she’d heard what Lonnie said and she knew he’d hold her to it. Dan was her responsibility now.
“But I don’t want your help,” Dan said as he looked away.
“That’s fine,” Gretchen said in a sturdy voice. She strode over to him and shoved a black bag into his hands. “You’re going to help us then.”
As if summoned for the duty of testing Dan’s loyalty, an eroded body shambled out from between two of th
e seasonal shelves twenty feet away. Its jaw hung open in a perpetual moan as bile seeped out from between its black teeth. It locked its clouded red eyes on Dan and Gretchen who stood concealed behind the pharmacy counter.
“Here,” she said as she tossed Dan a compact scout knife from her jeans pocket.
Dan caught it clumsily in his hands and stared down at the small concealed knife that looked more like a child’s toy than a weapon. “You’re not serious?”
Gretchen looked back at him over her shoulder with her hand on the doorknob. “Better get to it. It’s not going to kill itself.” She smiled.
Dan narrowed his eyes and stood up. He flicked his wrist and the knife popped out of hiding, the blade not even as long as his middle finger. He marched out after Gretchen.
She felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck as his footsteps neared. Her breath caught in her chest as his thin figure approached and cast a shadow on her back. She squeezed her eyes shut tight.
Dan Anderson continued past Gretchen toward the lowly zombie circling the pool toys. His feet never slowed as he came up, face to face, with the corpse and plunged the knife deep into its left eye socket, slicing the eyeball in half as it drove into the cerebrum.
The zombie’s mouth still hung wide open as the fight went out of it. It sagged to the tile floor as thick, black blood ran down its decayed, grayish face. There were no last twitches or spasms as life was extinguished. The thing had never been alive to begin with.
Dan’s shoulders rose and sank as he heaved over the unmoving corpse. His hand was drenched in bile and blood. He raised his dark eyes to Gretchen, who stood on the other side of the body in front of him. Her mouth hung open like the dead’s, but her eyes swam with emotions only the living experienced—awe and fear.
XI.
When Liam Scott went of his first supply run with Zack Kran, they were lucky enough to find an abandoned, fully stocked home not too far from the apartment complex, one that Zack and Ralph had previously overlooked, but had been a favorite of Liam’s since he moved in. It was an old Victorian tucked away behind the trees off a backroad behind a corn farm. They came back with a two week supply of food for everyone. He figured he would need that long to train Christine how to survive out there now that she wanted to go along with them.
“Here,” he said, handing her a complicated looking black crossbow, with wires, pullies, and a scope, but unfortunately no rope cocking aid.
Christine took hold of the hunting equipment and immediately almost dropped it as her small hands struggled to get a good grip, especially since she had no idea how to grip it in the first place. “I don’t think this is going to work for me,” she said as the crossbow swayed side to side before she let it fall to the ground completely with a thud.
Liam snorted.
“What?” she barked as she shoved it against the wall. “I’ve never used one of these things before and this one has all this stuff on it that it doesn’t need…”
He smirked with his arms crossed. “Whatever you say, love,” he said upbeat as he handed her his longbow. “You can use this. Now you do remember what I taught you before, correct?”
“You mean the one time you took me to shoot this thing and you were a condescending jerk? Yeah, I remember that.” She cocked her head to the side and tried to keep from smiling, but couldn’t.
“Then you’ll remember this is a longbow so it’s a bit large for you and the muscle required to nock an arrow back may be difficult for someone like…”
Christine glowered at him and pursed her lips, daring him to continue with what he was going to say.
“…someone of your stature,” he recovered with a smile. “But you did all right that day and I’m confident you’ll do even better today.”
He held onto the quiver of arrows as she gripped the sixty-eight inch longbow in one hand. It stood just as tall as she when placed on the cement of the patio. Her arms were already starting to feel flimsy after a few seconds of holding it up, but she’d never admit it. Instead, she would work herself to death before she told Liam she didn’t think she was capable of going out to gather supplies with him. He needed an extra set of hands, to carry and to kill. And she needed out of the apartment, which she hadn’t left in two months.
They stood and faced the brilliant sun over the parking lot. Garbage and debris of those who left in a hurry scattered the hot blacktop. Liam pointed outward to a small line of trees that clustered around the parking spaces directly in front of them. Tied with pieces of twine at different heights in the branches were crudely made round targets.
“Where did you get the wood for those?” Christine asked as she squinted.
Liam looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet. Both his hands gripped the protruding bones of his hips. He smiled and looked up at her through his light orange lashes. “The seats of the bar stools…” he said with a quick wrinkle of his nose. He waited for Christine to huff and sigh as she complained about him ruining the few nice things they had left.
Her lips twitched upward in a brief smile as she nodded her head. She shrugged. “Whatever, it’s fine. Let’s just do this.”
“Right,” he said, relief flooding his face. He stood close behind to correct her stance as she nocked back the first arrow.
It was only two seconds before the desire to release overwhelmed her stringy muscles. The arrow shot forward and took a plundering nosedive straight into the grassy median, nowhere near the trees she’d been aiming for. “These targets are too small,” she said as she let the bow drop to her side.
“If they were twenty feet wide you wouldn’t have been close,” he said with a laugh. She looked at him sharply and he wiped the smile off his face. “Oh, come on. Even you have to admit that wasn’t a commendable shot.”
She rolled her eyes before she lifted the bow again and snatched another arrow from the quiver, jarring it in his hands.
“Just relax,” he said slowly from behind her. “Breathe and hold long as you feel comfortable. Remember, the longer you hold it back the less sturdy your arms will be and the further off you’ll be from your target. That’s it,” he said as she nocked the arrow back and took a deep breath. “Now release the arrow as you exhale.”
He barely finished his sentence before her fingers released. She searched the ground with her hand raised to shade her eyes from the bright white rays of the sun. A steady breeze had finally rolled in and was cooling things down for fall, which she was grateful for, but she was also certain that it was the reason her arrows were landing so far from their targets. It had to be.
“Where is it?” She threw her hands up in the air, one still clutched around the bow’s limb.
“There,” Liam said. He pointed to one of the trees holding a makeshift target. “It’s in the trunk.” He turned to her with wild laughter that pierced the noon sky.
“OK, I get it,” she grit through her teeth. “I’m horrible at this. I shouldn’t even be—”
“No,” he interrupted, grabbing both her shoulders so she’d look at him. “That was brilliant!”
“You’re just saying that because you want to get laid tonight.” She gave a disappointed, crooked smile.
Liam kissed her on the forehead. “That was a really really excellent shot. Really!”
She shoved him in the chest and they both laughed. “You think you’re so slick,” she said. “Enough. Let’s go again.”
She looked out at the arrow that protruded from the thin, twisted tree and grinned. Could she be a natural? After all, she’d only used a bow twice in her life. Maybe a day or two of practice would be enough before she went out with the others.
XII.
Later that night, as Christine lie next to Liam, who was naked under the thin white sheet, she stared up at the unmoving ceiling fan. They’d practiced on and off the entire day and she hadn’t hit a single target. The excitement of nailing the tree trunk earlier had left her after her tenth failure to hit anything else. How was she ever going to
survive out there? Maybe she shouldn’t go. They’d be better off without her. She would only hold them back.
Her mind wandered as she tried to fall asleep. She looked over at Liam, who was on his back with one arm draped to shield his eyes from the inevitable morning light. His breathing was deep, but soft. She watched his chest rise and fall and felt the pit of her stomach twist into a gut-wrenching knot.
Were they even going to bother getting married with everything that had happened? It seemed a little ridiculous given the state of things. But every girl, even Christine, dreamed of their wedding day. A day that, for her, would probably never come. And what about children? Would Liam ever have anyone to carry on the Scott name? She knew that was something he found extremely important, given what happened to his parents, or at least he did before. Would there ever be someone to continue the tradition of shooting arrows on their birthdays? Her heart ached every time one of her questions went unanswered.
She rolled over onto her side and lay her arm across his bare chest, even though the air was warm and thick in the small, stale bedroom. He stirred and took a deep breath as he lifted his head from his pillow for a second. With a groan, he rolled into her and pulled her body toward him so that her head was buried in his soft skin. She took a deep breath despite the fact that they hadn’t bathe in days. He smelled of stagnant sweat and faded deodorant. She wondered how many more chances she would get to hold him like that before one of them was dead.
XIII.
It took the entire two weeks of nonstop training on the longbow, crossbow, and even a Bowie knife for day before Liam let Christine go out with them for supplies, still not fully onboard with the idea. He paced around the apartment that morning in a frenzy, rifling through boxes but never pulling anything out, tugging at his orange hair and rubbing the back of his neck.
