“You think you can walk into any house you want? Just because the world ended doesn’t mean that everybody else went with it.”
Ian wanted to calm the man enough for them to make it back outside without bullet holes in their bodies. “You are right. It was wrong of us.” He reached behind himself for the doorknob and slowly turned it.
“Find another house!” the man seethed through gritted teeth. He didn’t like playing the bad guy and his jaw was getting tired from clenching.
“Aye aye, captain!” Grant said, turning on his heels and running through the now open front door.
Outside, the street was full of the dead.
Ian glanced around for anything in which to hide, but the options were limited to some large dumpsters, with a stinky sludge in the bottom, and a child’s small playhouse in the backyard next door.
Grant thought of a better idea.
“We can hide in the basement.”
“Of this guy’s house? No way!” Ian turned his back to Grant and considered the garbage cans again. Sludge or shotgun?
“They aren’t using it and they’ll never know we are there.” Grant was already at the wooden door. It, like the front door, wasn’t locked. They climbed in.
The basement was full of stuff. Furniture, paintings, stacks of books, and clothing that looked to date back to the fifties. There was a thin layer of moisture on the floor and the entire space smelled of mold. Grant led the way on a small path carved through the junk. The only place they could find to sit was near an old utility sink in the darkest corner. They sat shoulder to shoulder with their backpacks in front of them. Ian shone his flashlight and discovered piles of rat feces beneath the sink.
• • •
You’ve been in far worse places than this closet.
“But Grant was with me. He made things bearable.”
• • •
Grant turned to humor to weather the situation. “Don’t fart,” he said.
“Don’t make me laugh!” Ian hissed. He shifted his focus to other things, like the spider resting on its perfectly spun web above the sink. Several insects sat motionless on the sticky surface, waiting patiently to be devoured. Or maybe they were dead. Ian felt kinship with them. He knew what it was like to lay below the top of the food chain; to be stuck in impossible situations with, barring a miracle, little hope for survival.
Above them, they could hear the man pacing and yelling at his wife. The children began to scream. Breaking glass next and then the firing of the shotgun followed by the thump of a newly made corpse hitting the floor.
Now only one child screamed. The back door was thrown open and small feet made their way quickly down the back stairs.
Ian and Grant were both holding their breath and silently hoping no one would try to hide in the basement. They waited ten minutes before speaking.
“We led the dead right to them. We got them killed!” Ian was still watching the spider, which had begun to wrap its prey in small bundles of silk.
Grant shrugged. “The guy was a prick anyway.”
“What about the kids? Don’t you feel bad for them?”
“We’re kids too, you know? I’m feeling pretty damaged right now.”
“You’ve been damaged since birth, Grant.”
“And now I’m hurting even more!”
Ian knew he was joking again. Grant wasn’t serious about much of anything.
“How long are we going to stay here?” Grant asked. “My legs are cramping.”
“You’re the one who chose this bat cave so don’t even start complaining. We have to wait even longer now. The screaming and the shotgun blasts didn’t help our situation.”
Grant stood up to move his legs and take a peek at the backyard. “Shit, it’s like a party out there.”
“We’ll wait a bit longer and then go upstairs. Maybe we can make a run for it through the front yard.”
• • •
A half hour later, the spider had eaten all the bugs in its web and Grant was growing impatient. Every so often, something moved upstairs.
“I think enough time has passed. Can we go up now?”
Ian looked through the basement’s small windows. Outside, the sun was setting. “Yeah, we can’t wait any longer.”
The boys climbed the short set of stairs that led to the first floor of the house. They listened at the door. A soft dragging noise moved by on the other side.
“Should we check the kitchen for some food while we’re here?” Grant asked, but his tone suggested it was merely to ask. He didn’t want to stick around in a house of potentially swarming with zombies.
“Where’s the front door from here?” Ian asked, ignoring Grant’s question and answering it at the same time.
Grant closed his eyes and tried to remember the layout of the house. “Turn left and take the first right.”
“I can’t do it,” Ian said. “I’m too scared to open the door.”
Grant reached for the knob and threw the door open into the hallway. “Run!” he whispered.
Ian held his hands out in front of him, hoping they wouldn’t touch anything unfriendly. The front door was open and the yard beyond it, clear.
“Into the first house without blood on it!” Grant yelled. “I’m right behind you.”
• • •
This one was the only option.
“A place I never would have had to choose, except that…”
…I LET DOWN MY GUARD
Before the debacle in the neighborhood, Ian and Grant had plenty of food in their packs, but they stopped at a high school for Ian to quickly retie his shoes. Movement out of the corner of Grant’s eye made them stay a moment longer.
“Whoa,” Grant said. There, on the athletic field, three girls jogged around the track like it wasn’t the end of the world. The boys watched their toned bodies move and their happy ponytails—and other things—bounce up and down. “We can’t leave yet.”
One of the girls noticed the boys. She pointed him out to her friends.
“Hey,” one of them said breathlessly after running from the far end of the field. The other two came up beside her, equally winded.
“Um, hi?” Ian said, confused. It was such a normal, casual greeting. None of them were even armed.
“I’m Nikki, this is Elyse,” the first girl said pointing to the brunette to her left, “and this is Cathleen. Like, who are you guys?” She flipped her hair.
Grant and Ian hated the valley girl type. It was a disappointment and Grant immediately changed his attitude. “Like, I’m Grant,” he said, flipping long imaginary locks, mocking Nikki’s mannerisms.
All three girls rolled their eyes. Nikki began to turn away from them and made to grab her friends’ arms. Grant might not have cared, but Ian didn’t want them to leave yet.
“That’s a really good idea, staying in shape in case you have to fight,” Ian said, trying to appeal to their egos. “You look like you would win.”
“We aren’t going to fight,” Elyse scoffed. “We have to stay in shape or we won’t fit in our uniforms.” She bent at her waist and reached her hands to the ground in a stretch.
“Yeah,” Cathleen chimed in. “Five pounds gained and it’s muffin top central in my skirt.”
“Wait, you were cheerleaders?” Grant asked. “Like ‘rah rah’ and all that?”
“We are still cheerleaders,” Nikki corrected him. “And when school starts up again, so will the games.”
“And we’ll be ready!” Elyse said with so much joy on her face that it made Ian want to cry.
“School isn’t going to start again,” he said. “You should be thinking about the future. How are you going to survive?”
“We’re doing fine, thank you!” Nikki spat before stomping toward a door on the side of the school.
The trio of girls wasn’t the first group Ian and Grant had met that thought the world would quickly return to business as usual, but they still seemed more normal than the others.
/> “We should go inside,” Cathleen said. “The creeps are starting to come around.”
Ian examined the fences. “It’s only a couple of zombies.”
“Don’t say the Z word!” Elyse shrieked. “Nikki hates it.”
“Seems like she hates a lot of things.” Grant shifted his backpack, which had begun to chafe his shoulders.
“Come on.” Cathleen waved for them to follow her. “You can relax in the gym.”
The gymnasium was hardly relaxing with its cold air and hardwood floors, but with few windows and only a couple of exits, it felt much safer than most places in which Grant and Ian had been. Nikki sat in a corner, removing her shoes, stretching, and then reading a book. Cathleen and Elyse disappeared into a side room and came out a short time later dragging a blue gym mat. Unfolded, it was large enough for five people to lie on.
“Your sleeping bags won’t be very comfortable on just the floor. This should help!” Cathleen smiled and then jogged over to Nikki.
“We can stay?” Ian asked. They didn’t seem eager for company, especially Nikki.
“For a night,” Elyse answered. “I don’t think Nikki wants you here longer than that.”
• • •
You should have left then.
“How were we to know?”
Ian tries to remember any small detail that might have tipped him off to the things to come, but he still can’t see anything suspicious in their actions.
Things too good to be true in the apocalypse usually are.
“Well you, my conscience, were asleep on the job.”
Fair enough.
“Besides, they gave us food!”
• • •
“From the vending machines,” Elyse said as she dropped an assortment of small plastic packages onto the mat. “Take whatever you want.”
Cathleen dropped another armful on top of the rest. “Yeah,” she said, “there’s no way we need all of this. We have to watch our figures.”
Grant and Ian considered the pile of junk food. They’d learned their lesson long before about eating crap. Grant chose a single Snickers bar and tucked it into a pocket of his backpack.
“Wow, that’s really nice of you,” Ian said, but he made no selections from the heap. Instead, he opened the top of his backpack and showed the girls its content. “And I’m not trying to be ungrateful, but we have everything we need. You should keep it.”
Cathleen and Elyse rolled their eyes at one another.
“Whatever,” Cathleen said.
“So, where are you three sleeping?” Grant asked. His question sounded sleazy, like he wanted to catch them in their underwear.
• • •
“He might not have liked cheerleaders, but girls were girls to Grant. He definitely would have wanted to see them in any form of undress that they’d allow.
What about you?
“You know I’m pickier.”
• • •
Elyse began to answer, but Nikki, who had come over stopped her. Her eyes were calling Grant “dirty” and “disgusting”.
“That,” Nikki said, “is none of your business!”
At dusk, the girls disappeared to another area of the school and Grant and Ian unpacked their sleeping bags. The blue mats added a surprising amount of warmth that night, allowing them to sleep more soundly than they had in weeks. When Ian awoke the next morning, he couldn’t immediately tell that anything was wrong. It was only when he went to his backpack for breakfast that he found it to be empty. Grant’s had been mostly emptied as well, except for a can of pinto beans. Even the Snickers bar was gone. He shook his friend awake and held his bag upside down near his face.
“They took nearly everything.”
Grant sat up. “We’ve been fucking robbed by cheerleaders?” His voice echoed in the large gym. He slid out of his sleeping bag, stuffed it in his backpack and ran for the doors. “Keep up, Ian!”
“No wonder they gave us all the food. They were just going to take it right back anyway.” Ian said as he followed. “We should be happy they didn’t kill us because they could have.”
“They should be hoping I don’t kill them!” Grant threw open doors to classrooms and supply closets looking for the girls. The cafeteria was full of garbage; the staff lounge held piles of dirty clothes, and the bathrooms stunk of girl shit, which, in Grant’s opinion, stunk worse than boys’. They found traces of the trio all over the school’s campus, but no girls.
Ian sat on a bench in the courtyard to catch his breath. He didn’t want to find them because seeing Grant hit a girl wasn’t something that Ian thought he could un-see.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Grant screamed. “Where are they hiding?”
“Maybe they’ve left?” Ian wished Grant would drop it. They’d lost supplies before when Ian’s house burned down. It wasn’t completely impossible to find more.
“Would you leave this setup? No way! As soon as we leave, they’ll be back. The school is their home.” He paced the length of the courtyard.
A lone zombie wandered into the area. Ian stood up slowly and walked to Grant, placing a hand on his shoulder to get his attention quietly. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where the hell are we supposed to go? And where will we get more food?”
“We could go back to the grocery store or maybe get some from the houses. Anywhere. But there’s nothing left here for us.”
Ian hoped to leave the school behind for more reasons than the thieving girls and the shuffler in the courtyard. He wanted to distance himself from something painful that was scratching at a shipping container a few blocks behind them.
• • •
It’s time to tell them about Ripley.
“I’m not ready to talk about her. I’ll never be ready.”
You told them about Grant, how you screwed up his life. Ripley made her own mistakes. It should be easy to talk about her.
“She was my first…” Ian says, remembering the closeness he shared with her. He inhales thinking he can smell her skin, but instead gets a noseful of the rotting bodies downstairs.
Welcome back to reality. Now tell them what you saw.
“My stint in the closet isn’t the first time I’ve been without Grant and the dead girl downstairs and the cheerleaders aren’t the first to have hurt me because…”
…I WENT AFTER RIPLEY
In a hostile world, beauty stands out; like flowers growing through cracks in the pavement or the fluid rainbow arcs in an oil slick. Ripley, the girl who wore a smile on her face as she dodged zombies in the street, was that beauty to Ian. She was an unforgettable brightness in the ever-darkening landscape.
On their journey east, the boys saw her looting a hardware store. Her work was quiet and meticulous. She was tall and lean and she appeared to be surviving much better than they were. Ian and Grant both stared at her like they hadn’t seen a girl before. She glanced up and Ian waved to her with a grin on his face. She waved back. A motion so simple and normal, Ian couldn’t get over it. Something about the return of such a silly gesture made him decide he needed to know the girl as much as she would let him.
He had lusted after many of the female species, but this was different. Is this what love feels like? He wondered.
“Let’s not go too far before we find somewhere to stay for the night,” Ian said to Grant. He didn’t want to lose track of the beautiful girl and the farther they traveled away from her, the more zombies he’d have to get through to get back to her. He hoped it wasn’t too obvious to Grant what his motives were.
“This place looks okay.” Grant was referring to a sprawling bungalow with a low fence and a thick garden, dead from the winter. There wasn’t a car in the driveway and the house was undisturbed by the chaos.
“Yeah, it does.” Ian suppressed his enthusiasm.
“Hey, man. I saw you checking out that girl. I don’t blame you. She was hot. I’d like to hole up with her somewhere.”
Ian smacked Grant�
�s shoulder. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Come on, Ian. We don’t have time for relationships.”
Ian was familiar with that tactic of Grant’s. He’d used it before to keep another girl for himself. As soon as he turned his back, Grant would be outside trying to find what Ian wanted.
“She’s mine. I saw her first.” Ian tried to sound confident, dominant.
“Oh, I get it. The virgin boy wants a shot with a lady.” Grant nudged his arm and winked exaggeratedly. “She does look easy, so I’m sure it’s a possibility.”
“Don’t call me a virgin boy!” Ian thought it was only fair that he have a chance with the girl. Grant had already lost his virginity. It was Ian’s turn. “Can you just be my wingman for once?”
“I doubt she’ll say yes, but I won’t stop you.”
• • •
You didn’t trust him.
“Hell no. Grant always got the girl. Between the two of us, they’d always choose him.”
You don’t sound too sour about it.
“Ha! I just couldn’t give him the chance again.”
So you snuck out.
• • •
They were sleeping in a bedroom that was centered in the house. It felt safe. That night, when Grant fell asleep, Ian left to find the girl. The floorboards moaned, but the sounds only blended into the nightscape.
Ian caught a glimpse of himself in a hallway mirror. He was surprised to find it a handsome reflection. Due to poor nutrition and quite a bit more exercise, Ian had lost weight and he was closing in on Grant’s handsomeness. This bolstered his confidence and he strode out the front door as though it was a normal day and he was on his way to school.
But to step outside in the dark was a huge and unnecessary risk. It was akin to putting one foot in the grave. Every corner Ian turned held a new opportunity to die. Broken glass, starving stray dogs, and of course, zombies were just a few of the dangers he would encounter.
Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse Page 4
