by Alex Apostol
“Get off him!” Dan heard Gretchen shout in some far off place. As he came to, her voice became stronger as well as the stabbing in his head.
“He tried to leave the building!” Rowan yelled as he pointed down at Dan. The gun hung loosely to the floor in his other hand.
“Who cares,” she yelled back. “He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”
“I just…wanted to have…a smoke,” Dan groaned as he rolled on the floor, the pain in his head overwhelming him until he thought he would lay down and die. “I didn’t…want to smoke…where ya’ll slept…”
Gretchen’s heart strings felt a tug as she looked down at Dan’s bloodied, beaten face. “See! He wasn’t running off, you lunatic.”
“I wasn’t worried about him leaving and not coming back. If that were the case, I would’ve opened the door and gave him a handshake on his way out. I was more concerned with him drawing those things to us.” Rowan’s voice kept raising and lowering as he made an effort to control himself.
“Draw them with what? The soft sounds of him breathing out smoke?” You’re insane!” Gretchen scowled up at him as she tried to help Dan to his feet. “You realize he’s hurt now, right? That means we have to stay here, take care of him…he could have a concussion. Are you really as stupid as you look?” She was on a rant that she couldn’t stop. Her eyes flickered briefly to the gun in his hand, but the fear that he’d use it on her wasn’t there.
“You came to us looking for help and protection, remember?” His voice was raised again. “I’m just trying to keep everything together till Lonnie gets back with that Mitchell kid.”
Gretchen laughed heartily and it echoed throughout the silent building. “Wake up, Rowan. Lonnie’s not coming back. It’s been weeks. He’s dead.”
“Shut up, you stupid bit—”
“What’s going on?” Gale’s sighed lazily from behind them.
“Look what he did to Dan,” Gretchen turned, her voice was no longer angry, but fawning with concern. “Look what he did to his face.”
Gale looked down at Dan and then over to Rowan. She ran a hand through her short salt and pepper hair and rolled her eyes. “I know you think you’re the big kahuna around here now that Lonnie’s dead, and believe me, that stupid prick is dead and gone, never to return.”
Rowan huffed through his nose. He opened his mouth to retaliate, but Gale held up a hand and stopped him with wild eyes and a tight-mouthed scowl. “Don’t speak. You listen to me, Rowan Brady.” She held her finger up so close to his face he could have bit it off. “You will not hurt one of your own…ever! Or you’ll answer to me. Do you understand?”
Rowan’s breathing steadied as he stared past Gale’s left ear. His shoulders hunched slightly as he swung his gun around so the strap pulled against his chest. Gale widened her eyes. She didn’t blink, didn’t look away, until he said what she wanted to hear.
“Yes.”
“OK. Good. We can all move on, then.” She turned to Gretchen and looked her in the eyes.
“Right. All’s good. I’ll just take Dan over here and attempt to patch up his head. Thank God he wasn’t hit somewhere important.” She got the crumpled young man to his feet and they stumbled off together to the lobby desk.
Gale turned back to Rowan. “I want you to go check the perimeter, see if you find anything.”
“Like what? What do you expect me to find out there? It’s the middle of the night and freezing,” Rowan said in a way that resembled a teenager about to throw a fit when their mom asked them to do a simple chore.
“Stop talking and go. I don’t want to see you back here till you’ve found something that can help us. You owe Dan something good,” she said quiet enough to not form an echo.
“How about I leave and never come back?” Rowan growled. He leaned in close to Gale’s face as if what he said was some sort of threat to her. “See how long you last without me.”
Gale didn’t flinch. Nothing in her face revealed how she felt, except maybe boredom. “There’s the door,” she answered. “Go through it and it’s up to you if you want to come back. We’ll be here.”
He turned and threw the crowbar to the tile ground with a loud clank. “I’m serious, Gale. I’ll go.”
“Say hi to Lonnie for me, then,” she said with her hands in the pockets of her black sweatpants.
He wrenched the doors open and stalked out into the snowy night. “At least Lonnie had a plan,” he said, turning back around when he was a few steps out. “At least he thought about the future. All you want to do is sit around and wait to die.” He walked another few steps and shoved his hands into the pocket of his jacket.
“Oh, and, Rowan…”
He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of turning around once again, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“We’re doing just fine without Lonnie and we’d be just fine without you, too.”
Rowan stalked off into the darkened parking lot alone. The same panic rose through his stomach as the last time he found himself walking alone through the zombie-ridden world. Only this time, he knew Lonnie wouldn’t be there to save him.
VII.
Gale went to secure the doors again after Rowan disappeared into the trees, but she went outside instead and found a marble bench in the middle of a dead garden, full of weeds and twigs and cold, hard mulch. She brushed the snow off with her bare hands and sat down, legs crossed at the ankles, as she looked up into the black sky. The door opened again. She didn’t look to see who it was. She already knew.
“That was crazy,” Gretchen said as she brushed the spot next to Gale on the bench and sat down.
She held her hands together in her lap and shoved them between her legs for warmth. No one had been lucky enough to find gloves yet, but then again, it had been the middle of summer when it all started. What little winter wear stores had in stock people snatched up immediately.
“Do you think he’s right?” Gretchen asked as she stared down at her lap.
Gale finally tore her eyes away from the darkness above her and looked to Gretchen. “Right about what?”
Gretchen let her head fall to the side as her eyes darted away from Gale’s. She forced them to look at her again before she spoke. “About the whole future thing. Are we just waiting to die? Should we be, I don’t know, building a home, a community…families? I mean, what happens when this is all over and these things are gone? We’re going to want to start over. To rebuild…repopulate, right?”
Gale licked her lips. She had the sneaking suspicion the “we” Gretchen referred to was not all of humanity, but them specifically. She chewed on her dry bottom lip.
“Here,” Gretchen said. She pulled out a small Chapstick from her pocket and handed it over.
Gale’s eyes lit up as she took it delicately, grasping it between two thick fingers. “Where’d you get this?”
Gretchen hushed her and looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching at the door. “I found it on the ground, believe it or not. Don’t tell anyone, OK? It’ll be gone in a day if everyone starts using it.”
“You secret’s safe with me,” Gale said, distorted as she puckered her lips. The creamy substance felt like heaven. “Much better.” She handed it back.
“Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret.” Gale readjusted herself on the bench.
Gretchen leaned forward.
“There is no end to this. This is it. Forever and ever until we all die.”
Gretchen sat back and pursed her lips. “You’re the second person to tell me that today. You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“There is no cure. There is no way out. And there’s no reason to settle down into a place that’s just going to get taken away from you again.” Her voice growled low as irritation boiled up inside her. “There’s no reason to throw your sense of self away, because you feel it’s your duty as a woman to bring a child into this goddamn mess of a world.”
“I didn’t mean, I mean…I
wasn’t,” Gretchen stumbled as her cheeks burned.
“Are you even a lesbian? I mean, really?” Gale asked. She leaned her arm on her knee and glared at Gretchen with scrutiny.
“Yes. No. I think so,” she stammered, shaking her head.
“Well, which is it, girl? Either you are or you aren’t.”
“Charlie was the first girl I’d ever been with,” she blurted out and then her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t really know who I am without her, I guess,” she said as they fell down her cheek.
Gale sat back up and took a deep breath. “Look. Let me put it to you the only way I know how. I’m from Oklahoma, a tiny little town I’m sure you’ve never heard of called Sweetwater, and my daddy was a farmer, just like his daddy before him and his daddy before him and so on and so forth. Anyway, one summer when I was sixteen he took me out to one of the fields. The entire crop, acres and acres, was ruined. Dead. It never even had a chance. When I asked him what happened he said it was the soil.
“See, there’s all kinds of things that can get into the soil, things smaller than the eye can see. No one knows they’re coming, either. There’s no signs, nothing to give them away, whatever they are. In the blink of an eye, everything you’ve worked so hard to grow is obliterated. That’s exactly what happened to us that year and that’s exactly what’s happening to us right now.
“I asked my daddy if he was going to start over, plant again, and see if anything grew, but he said no. There was nothing that would grow out of that soil, for whatever reason. It was dead soil, just like now. Humanity will never grow again here. It’s gone.”
“Then, what’s the point?” Gretchen asked after a long pause, her eyebrows pushed together.
Gale shrugged her shoulders and scraped at the ground with the toe of one of her tennis shoes. “Are you ready to check out just yet?”
“No,” Gretchen said immediately.
“Then, I guess that’s the point.”
Gretchen nodded. She stood up to go back inside.
“Don’t lose sight of who you really are just because of what’s going on around you,” Gale said as Gretchen turned and went through the double glass doors.
Gale stood alone in the freezing cold as the snow began to fall again.
VIII.
Rowan ran as fast as he could to the front doors of the building his group was secured in.
“Let me in! Come on, let me in!” he screamed as he yanked on the doors relentlessly. They didn’t budge.
Everyone inside jumped to their feet in a matter of seconds; even Dan, though his head felt like it’d been split in two. He waivered on the spot and raised a hand to where it throbbed the hardest.
“Well, someone let him in!” Gretchen screeched, but didn’t move to do it herself.
Gale walked quickly to the doors and opened one. Rowan pushed past her in a hurry and closed it behind him, pressing his entire body against it in a panicked huff.
“Secure the doors!” he yelled at Gale.
“What’s going on?”
Gale didn’t move fast enough as she bent down to pick up the crowbar. Rowan grabbed it from her violently. “There was a bunch of them all over this dead deer.” He spoke so quickly it was hard for anyone to understand him. “I tried to back away to leave. I didn’t want them to see me. I didn’t mean for them to see me, but they did and now they’re headed this way!” Despite the freezing temperatures, his face was beat red and drenched with sweat.
“Goddammit!” Gale said to him. “What the hell did you lead them back here for?”
“I didn’t know where else to go. They were right behind me.” Once the doors were secured he backed away from them slowly with his hands displayed out in front of him.
“How many were there?” Gretchen asked from the lobby desk.
“I don’t know. Twenty. Thirty. Fifty. I don’t know!”
“Fifty?” Gale yelled. “Why didn’t you lead them away so we could have a chance?”
Rowan whirled around to face her. “You? What about me? I had nowhere else to go! They would have eaten me alive!”
“Ok, enough!” Carolyn said, surprising everyone. “We’re wasting time fighting with each other.”
“She’s right,” Olivia Darling agreed with the weathered bat clenched in both her hands. “We need a plan. Grab your weapons.”
Everyone did as she said without question.
Before Olivia spoke her next order, Gale’s tactical training took over. “I want you and you to search this place for another way out,” she said, pointing to Dan and Gretchen. “There has to be one. Go!”
They ran off to the back of the building. They opened every door that wasn’t locked, but only found closets full of useless junk and cleaning supplies.
“There’s nothing here,” Gretchen reported back out of breath.
“No window in the bathroom either. I checked. Dammit. Do we have time to make it out the front and circle around?”
Rowan stared at her with his eyes wide and mouth open as his brain worked double time. “Maybe? I don’t know if more heard me running. There could be others coming from other directions.”
“Were you running around, flailing your arms in the air and screaming like an idiot or something?” Gale snapped at him.
“I thought I was going to die! You don’t know what that’s like!” he yelled back. “We’ve been taking care of you while you took it easy ever since you joined this group and come to find you’re some fucking Marine officer!”
“They’re here,” Olivia said with a finger pointed at the doors. The room fell silent.
Emerging from the darkness were moaning, walking, hungry corpses, one after another like moths drawn to a light as they headed for the park building. There were at least forty in the vast, open lot and more trickled out to join them every second. Rowan had called it right. While some came directly at them from the right side where he ran out from, others trickled from the left, the parking lot directly in front of them, and even a few from around back. There were more than fifty.
“Maybe if we open just one door we can take them out one by one, control how many come in at a time,” Gale thought out loud as she gripped a long knife in her hand.
“Yeah right!” Rowan said, his voice breaking. “We’re not letting those things in here. They’ll rip us apart!”
“It’s either we let them in on our terms and try to thin the herd for a getaway, or they let themselves in, full force, and we die.”
“Lee should be on the door,” Olivia chimed in again. “He’s the strongest, so he’ll be able to hold it closed and he’ll also be protected between the door and wall. That leaves the rest of us to kill the zombies.” Olivia smiled. She raised her bat to rest on her shoulder. “It’s the best plan we’ve got.”
The bodies ambled forward automatically as their horrifying features grew clearer in the darkness. Bloody messes of gore moaned in the freezing night air, their jaws wrenched open, or in some cases torn open, to reveal rows of black, jagged teeth ready to pierce the skin of the warm flesh on the other side of the glass doors.
——
All the color drained from Gretchen’s face. She held tightly onto the pistol she found a few days ago with both hands. When she opened it there were only three bullets left inside. One of her hands moved to her waist to rest on the Bowie knife that hung from her belt. It’d proven itself time and time again.
Dan swayed from side to side as he shook his head. The bloodied wound didn’t hurt as much. Maybe the fear stifled the pain. He bounced up and down and shook out his hands, taking deep breaths before he reached into the back of his pants for the matching pistol to Gretchen’s.
On the last run they made to someone’s abandoned house they found each of the pistols in the hands of a dead man. He was in bed, his ribs pried open to reveal a hollow chest. There was a single small hole in his forehead. They figured he tried to defend himself against the dead with the two nine-millimeters and once he was bit, he knew it
was over so he shot himself.
“Oh, and you know those doors have floor and ceiling locks right?” Olivia said, breaking up the electricity in the air. She pointed to the holes.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that before?” Gale demanded.
“I wanted to see how long it took you all to find them. You’re even slower than my last group.”
Lee walked over to the door, calm as could be, as if he were waiting for friends to join him for dinner at his house. He secured one door with the bolt locks, removed the crowbar, and put it through his belt loop.
“You,” Gale said, pointing at Rowan, “Stand on this side. “You, here.” She moved Gretchen to stand next to him. “And you, here. We’ll form an arch. That way we have full coverage. Back up a little. Give them enough room to come in so Lee can close the door.”
Everyone stood in position with their weapons ready.
“On my count, Lee,” she said. Stifling panic wrapped around her lungs and constricted them. “One…”
Gretchen’s hands shook as she clutched her pistol. Her eyes darted from the herd of dead bodies approaching outside to the knife on her belt.
“Two…”
Olivia’s bat was raised and pulled back behind her, eager to crack some heads open. She tried to stay focused, but Dan’s bouncing kept catching her eye.
“Three. Open it!”
IX.
The dead moved forward, shoving into each other as Lee opened one door a tiny crack. It took everything he had to not let them knock the door all the way back to flood in and overwhelm the group. Four got through before he wedged his foot into where the floor and wall met. With every ounce of muscle he had, he kept the rest at bay behind the glass door.
A female with torn, sagging, bloody skin, half her jaw missing to expose ragged muscles and tendons, lurched forward. Three loud shots rang out. Two hit the shoulder and one landed in the head. The body fell face first to the floor at Gretchen’s feet, its hand on her boot.
