Age of Z: A Tale of Survival

by T. S. Frost

  Twice he hissed angrily and grabbed Alexa's wrist, jerking them aside just in time for Alexa to literally feel cold fingers brushing at her shoulder or leg. And once he had wrapped an arm around Alexa's torso and launched them into the air without pausing in the run, to avoid what Casey later said he thought might have been an abandoned truck on the road.

  Part of Alexa, that survivalist instinct still screaming at her to keep running until she died, wondered why Casey didn't just abandon her in the dark. It had to be close to impossible for him to navigate by himself to begin with, much less dragging a blind, exhausted, much weaker person around behind him.

  Alexa knew Casey had to be restraining himself at least in part and yet he kept pace with Alexa. It would be so easy for him to save himself, bolt ahead into the night and outrun the hungry moans behind them. Alexa honestly wouldn't have blamed him if he had, even if it would have meant her own death in the process; she wanted her brother to survive this.

  Maybe that was the reason he stayed behind, because family was worth it, something that needed to be protected and gave you the strength to keep going no matter what. Alexa knew that it was the reason she was still going by now, even though she was so tired and scared and her throat burned and her stomach rumbled and she could barely breathe.

  She wasn't going to give up, but by now she wasn't going to give up for Casey's sake, because it was so much easier to survive and keep pushing yourself when you were doing it for somebody else running alongside you.

  In the end they ran for a brutal four hours before they managed to reach what passed for shelter now: an abandoned single-story farmhouse that Casey was more-or-less responsible for sensing out in the dark. They couldn't hide inside of it, but the roof was mostly stable, and it had just enough height that it would deter zoms–at least long enough for them to rest and gather their strength so they could flee again when the light came.

  Casey had to jump them up onto the roof, and it was a mark of just how worn down he was that he barely managed the ten-foot distance, and collapsed onto his side as soon as they found a sturdy portion of the roof that would hold their weight.

  Alexa was tempted to join him, except that she was first inclined to lean over the edge of the roof and violently throw up everything in her stomach, which by this point was pretty much nothing. Then she collapsed onto the broken shingles and focused entirely on breathing, which was more amazing and more painful than she ever remembered.

  The zoms didn't take long to catch up to them, and within an hour the entire house was surrounded as the monsters groaned and clawed at the walls and pressed against each other in a mass of walking death. But by now the chase had turned into a siege, which was just as terrifying but at least familiar, and Alexa and Casey knew how to handle it.

  They retreated as far into the center of the roof as they safely could–ten feet was just not a comforting height with a horde of zoms surrounding you. The rest of the horrible night was spent huddling together, shaking from a combination of exhaustion and fear. All attempts at bravery and dignity were abandoned in favor of tactile comfort, and that desperate need to know that even in the pitch black there was still somebody there with them in all this.

  After another hour of listening to the unrelenting moans Alexa attempted to convince Casey to sleep, and even in the dark Alexa knew the clone was giving her a dull-eyed, incredulous look, as if to ask, sleep, through this?

  But Alexa was insistent, and pointed out that with well over seventy zoms surrounding them, they were going to need Casey at the top of his game to get them out of there (she did not voice her guilt at shoving all the responsibility on Casey's shoulders, but it was there, in the back of her head).

  Casey eventually reluctantly agreed, but even with relatively well-planned sieges it was impossible to truly sleep, and this was a worst-case scenario if there ever was one.

  In the end Casey only managed by curling up and burying his head in Alexa's chest, as close as he possibly could to his companion's heartbeat, while Alexa wrapped an arm around him and covered the clone's other ear with her hand to deaden the noise as much as she possibly could.

  It was awkward, both to manage physically and just in general (Alexa solemnly swore that if they got out of this alive she would never speak of it to anybody). But it worked, and Casey managed a weak-but-viable four and a half hours of sleep while Alexa kept watch until the first smudge of light bloomed in the east.

  Alexa had never been so excited to see the sunrise in her life, although the sight of well over eighty zombies surrounding them had dampened the enthusiasm somewhat. By then she was beyond exhausted, functioning entirely on pure terror and loyalty alone.

  Casey's rest had done him some good, at least, and when woken he was able to jump them with renewed energy over the surrounding horde of zombies and towards freedom. Then the running again, as the zoms inevitably turned to give chase. But it was daylight now, and while still horrible not nearly as terrifying, especially when they could see buildings–and potential shelter–far in the distance.

  During the final hour Alexa had finally collapsed, unable to push herself any further and not even running on fumes anymore after no food, no sleep, and too much tension in the past twenty-four hours, and Casey had been forced to carry her.

  Alexa didn't remember much of that, other than blacking out and waking up on the fourth floor of a worn but serviceable office building, with Casey standing guard. They were both as dead on their feet as they could be without literally being dead after that harrowing encounter, and spent two days in that office just resting, trying to build up their strength after that horrible night.

  The recovery period gave Alexa plenty of time to think, and that was when she really started to realize just how badly she was screwing things over for Casey. Because when she thought back to all the mishaps and near death experiences they'd had since beginning the journey out to central U.S., Alexa started to realize that the vast majority of their problems were on her shoulders, not Casey's.

  The guilt from the sieges was already bad enough, and after that death run they'd forced themselves to do it grew even more. Because as honored as she was to know Casey was there for her, and had risked everything to stick by her and keep her safe, the fact of the matter was Casey would have been much better off in that fiasco if Alexa hadn't been there at all.

  It was nice to know she wouldn't be abandoned, that Casey had chosen to follow her to begin with instead of staying safe and sound in New Avalon, and stuck with her out of loyalty. But that made her feel worse about the fact that Casey was still around even when it was clearly starting to be more hazardous to him, because Alexa felt like a ball and chain more than anything useful.

  It got even worse when she thought of everything else they'd been through. Because the long exhausting nights and zom chases were only part of the trip, and if she just couldn't keep up with Casey when the gloves were off and there was serious action at stake, well, she wouldn't have been all that surprised.

  Before, when she'd first found Casey and was guiding him to New Avalon, there had been an obvious division of skills–Casey had the strength, but Alexa had the skills and the experience. Alexa was, in essence, the brains of the operation, while Casey clearly supplied the brawn, and between the two of them they made a good team.

  Except that wasn't the case anymore. Alexa had been diligently teaching Casey for weeks now, and once she'd gotten Casey over that hurdle of believing he was nigh invincible, he'd been a quick study.

  Casey adapted quickly and skillfully to most survival situations, rarely needing advice, and after all those terrifying nights under siege had even developed a healthy, wary respect for the zoms and was becoming less inclined to throw himself into a fight with them just because.

  By now Casey was a veteran survivalist in his own right, and had both the brains and the brawn to manage it solo, if he really wanted to. Alexa's experience was hardly an asset anymore, making her virtually useless in that regard
.

  She couldn't even pull her own weight anymore–literally–Casey already carried three times what Alexa did, handling the majority of their supplies, and when they had to jump to escape he even went so far as to carry everything, including Alexa. As if it wasn't enough for him to be doing most of the other survival work, he was doing most of the physical work as well.

  Alexa felt terrible for shoving all that responsibility onto Casey's shoulders. She was, at the barest level, forcing her adopted little brother to do almost everything on this trip, from handling supplies to getting them out of deadly scrapes.

  How was it any better than what Gentech had planned for him, using him as a tool instead of a weapon? What did Casey get out of it in return? Nothing but bad memories, exhaustion, stress, and extra baggage in the form of a useless girl he apparently felt obligated to escort out of some stupid promise or some belief that he owed her one.

  Alexa was horrified to discover, the longer they went, that he had even started to deteriorate from those things the same as any normal human. The clone was starting to sport the same dark, near-permanent shadows under his eyes that Alexa knew she herself had, and Alexa could have sworn he'd lost a little weight as well from all the running they'd done on top of not enough food.

  Casey never voiced any complaints on the matter, but Alexa knew he wouldn't, because he still had that stupid hero complex and figured he ought to be able to handle it all. Alexa was still responsible for the occasional bit of useful advise, or talking Casey through the worst of the sieges, but she couldn't help but feel that if she'd just worked a little harder to convince Casey to stay behind, he wouldn't have been forced to deal with those things to begin with.

  It was an infuriating and frustrating conclusion to come to, and Alexa hated the thought that she could be holding Casey back, or causing him more trouble when Casey could do so well on his own. So she resolved to work harder, so she'd be as little a burden as possible.

  She hurled herself into their survival needs with renewed determination. She worked twice as hard as before to ensure they were able to scavenge or hunt up enough food, find appropriate shelters, and make it through every terrifying night by keeping watch more often so LS could get his rest, or talk him through the bad nights as much as possible.

  It worked, for a few days. But then things got worse, much worse, as fate decided to screw with their heads and throw everything it had against them, throwing their lives straight into the depths of despair.

  Chapter 12

  It started with the storms.

  It was mid-August by now, and while they had been forced to huddle inside some meager shelter for the occasional rainfall, the weather had largely been hot, sticky, and humid as they traveled. It was uncomfortable, but not unmanageable, as long as they stayed hydrated and didn't push themselves to the point of heatstroke.

  However, almost five weeks into the journey, they were hit by a solid week of cold, wet, dreary weather, the kind that left a person wanting to be lazy and sleepy and hide indoors and pretty much locked up all forms of movement after the apocalypse.

  To make matters worse, the entire mess began with a massive thunderstorm that rushed up upon them almost out of nowhere, while they were caught out in the open. Both Casey and Alexa had seen the dark clouds rolling towards them on the horizon, and even without a pack of zoms on their heels they ran as if their lives depended on it.

  It hadn't done them much good. They'd found themselves caught out in the icy downpour for nearly half an hour before they'd finally found some scattered suburbs and abandoned houses they could use as potential shelter. They'd been forced to fight a few of the walking dead to get in–the streets were more populated than they would have liked, and if the circumstances hadn't been so desperate they would have avoided the area altogether.

  The end result was that, by the time they were safely ensconced in somebody's second-floor bedroom with the stairs torn out and the walking dead now fully dead, they were soaked straight through to the bone. Their shelter wasn't the best, either; the windows had been shattered long ago, leaving the building drafty and cold, and parts of it had rotted, but it was the best they could get on such short notice.

  Casey was largely unaffected by the wind or the rain, but Alexa shivered uncontrollably, even after she had changed into drier clothes, and they'd been forced to light a careful fire on the second floor, which inevitably attracted more zoms. The storm had cut into their planned foraging time too, meaning there was barely anything for dinner.

  It was a bad night, and Alexa couldn't seem to get warm even when she was huddled as close as she could get to the fire and wrapped in all the blankets they had, or find sleep no matter how exhausted she was. It turned into a bad morning the next day too, when the weather remained dismal and they were still stuck indoors.

  The next four days were much the same, unnaturally cold for August and dreary, barely giving them a few hours of travel time in between chilly drizzles and ear-shattering, blinding thunderstorms. Their already slow travel rate diminished to a snail's pace as they staggered forward bit by bit.

  It made Alexa miserable–she'd always hated the rain anyway, something about it just killed her normally cheerful mood–but it got worse when she realized the situation was nastier than she'd originally realized. The cold and the wet, while little more than an inconvenience and an annoyance to Casey, were sapping Alexa's strength.

  She couldn't seem to get warm anymore, no matter how much she huddled into her thick jacket that she'd traded for back at New Avalon. Between the weather, the lack of food and rest on top of grueling travel conditions, and the constant strain of keeping an eye and an ear out for zoms, she realized she was steadily getting worse.

  It was absolutely confirmed for her when the coughing started, part-way through the miserable week. At first she didn't think much of it, with the occasional cough here or there, but when she was still hacking a few hours later she began realizing she was actually getting sick.

  Still, it was just a cough, which was unfortunate but not the end of the world. The cold was just getting to her, that was all. It wasn't anything important, and she'd get over it just fine once the weather started warming up a little.

  Casey noticed it, inevitably, but when he asked if she was okay, with his normally grumpy expression drawing into a deeper frown of confusion, Alexa brushed it off and insisted she was fine. Just a cough. Nothing special.

  Casey did not appear entirely convinced, but Alexa knew he couldn't exactly argue, either. He'd never been sick after all, and Alexa was well aware that medical information was not one of the things covered in that massive index of information in his head, meaning Casey was out of his depth on this one.

  Alexa had never steered him wrong before, so he'd have to assume she was correct on this one, which let Alexa bend the truth just a teensy bit. No point in worrying her companion, after all, not when Casey already had to handle more than his fair share of the work on the road.

  Alexa did start to worry to herself, though, when a few more days passed and the coughing still hadn't gone away.

  In fact, it had gotten worse, with much deeper, dragging coughs and fits that came more often. Sometimes she felt like she was having a harder time breathing in between, too, like she couldn't get quite enough air.

  She kept her concerns to herself, but inwardly she was starting to worry, just a little. Getting sick while traveling through zom territory was bad. It had happened to her a few times before, and even though she'd been lucky enough to be close to major settlements and had been able to retreat for proper rest, those times had still been pretty terrifying.

  This was worse, far worse; they were still in no-man's land, barely across the state line into Indiana and still a good three hundred miles from the military base they were aiming for. At their current snail's pace they were still at least three weeks from reaching any sort of safe haven, and probably it would be even longer than that, with the number of zoms they'd seen since
hitting central U.S.

  If she didn't start getting better soon, she was going to be in serious trouble. But without the proper medications or nutrition or a chance to rest safely for a long enough period of time, that probably wouldn't be happening any time soon.

  Not good.

  To Alexa's immense frustration, despite trying to treat herself quietly with some aspirin and being careful to drink as regularly as she could to stay hydrated, she found that her cough had still not retreated a few days later, even though the weather had shifted to becoming humid and sunny once again two days ago.

  Despite the newly returned heat she also found herself shivering in her jacket frequently. It was getting harder and harder to push herself to keep up with even their usual slow traveling pace; she tired much faster than before, and sometimes by the end of a long march her legs all but collapsed underneath her, when they finally found shelter. She was getting worse, and she knew it.