Age of Z: A Tale of Survival

by T. S. Frost

  “I can keep watch–”

  “No you can't. Now eat up.” He left no room for argument, and Alexa, in between muttering and coughing, downed her meager dinner and flopped back down on the mattress. Sleep came for her quickly, and the last thing she was aware of was Casey stepping around the bed and settling down sitting upright near the window. Then it was dark and she sunk into another fitful but relieving rest.

  Travel after that fell into much the same pattern. Alexa would wake up a little more refreshed than the previous day, and spend the first few hours of their journey moving under her own power. But inevitably her strength would be sapped away before too long, and she would be forced to lean on Casey for the support, or stop for a break.

  When they were caught by zoms–still far too often for their tastes–Casey didn't even bother to ask anymore before scooping Alexa up and bolting. Disgusted as she was to admit it, Alexa had to agree it was the right choice–she just didn't have it in her to outrun even the walking dead anymore.

  Casey would inevitably halt their progress long before dusk, usually whenever he found the first relatively safe structure to act as a shelter. He would modify until it was safe enough for him to leave Alexa there to rest while he hunted down supplies and scouted the area for zombies.

  Sometimes he would come back looking grim but satisfied, which inevitably meant he had smashed in a few zom heads, and sometimes he'd return looking concerned, collect Alexa, and leave while the going was still good for the both of them. They'd find another shelter, rinse, and repeat.

  Sometimes if the place was relatively safe they'd both rest for the night; if it seemed more dangerous Casey would usually stay up to keep watch, for all Alexa's protests to the contrary and insistence that she should help.

  Alexa hated every minute of it. Most of it was largely because being sick in general was miserable, and being sick during the apocalypse in no-man's land was infinitely more so. But there was more to it than that, because the longer the pattern held, the worse Alexa felt in ways that had nothing at all to do with her illness.

  If she'd been useless before, she was absolutely dead weight now, sometimes even literally when Casey was forced to carry her to their next destination or away from hunting zombies. She was too weak to participate in foraging and hunting and scavenging anymore, forcing Casey to leave her behind in relatively secure locations for longer and longer periods of time, as he struggled by himself to find the necessary food and supplies.

  That also cut into their travel time, when Casey had to do all the hunting and searching on his own, and Alexa was already slowing them down simply by being sick and unable to move quickly, meaning they were barely moving at all by this point.

  Sometimes when the weather got worse–another day of storms, or passing rain-showers–they couldn't afford to move at all, because Alexa would certainly get worse if exposed again to the rain and the cold. It meant they were locked up in a makeshift shelter for another day without moving, while the surrounding area had already been picked clean of anything useful.

  As if that wasn't bad enough, it had been like a punch to the gut when Alexa discovered, five days after Casey confronted her about her illness, that sometimes the clone hadn't even been able to find enough food for the both of them, in which case he gave it all to Alexa because she was sick and he wasn't.

  He neatly deflected Alexa's frantic, cough-interspersed questions and accusations over the matter with unrepentant, unconcerned responses like “I'm not hungry” or “I already ate” or “I don't need it anyway”. But Alexa couldn't help but feel like she was stealing all the same, even if she had no choice in the matter.

  The worst of it all was, for all of Casey's efforts, despite taking all of their responsibilities and sacrificing some of his own needs in the process, Alexa still wasn't getting better; she was certainly getting worse. Her coughing increased, as did the shortness of breath, and lately when she tried to take deeper breaths there was a sharp, stabbing pain in her chest that left her aching and curling up on herself.

  Her shaking increased, and she was nearly always chilly, but frequently found herself sweating at the same time. When asked, Casey reported grimly that her temperature appeared to have risen further, which meant that her fever had likely gotten worse.

  She sometimes got nasty headaches, which were only slightly relieved with the aspirin in the first aid kit. She was almost always tired now, even after resting for hours, and her strength drained away even faster than before when they had to start traveling again, to the point where Casey was spending more and more time carrying her and less and less time just helping her walk.

  Alexa couldn't claim to be an expert on illness, but she knew the basics at least. When her mind was feeling less hazy and she was able to focus better, she tried to diagnose herself. She knew she'd gone beyond just a common cold, but she wasn't showing flu symptoms either.

  Most of her current symptoms were suspiciously in line with pneumonia, which sent a chill that was not related at all to her fever up her spine when she finally realized it. If she was dealing with pneumonia, she was pretty sure she was screwed.

  Back before Z-day, simple cases could be treated fairly easily. Unfortunately for Alexa, nothing was easy these days, and pneumonia could be deadly even before the apocalypse.

  For the first time Alexa began to wonder if she was going to walk away from this at all. Statistically speaking her chances were extremely poor, which was not a comforting thought. But she kept her observations and thoughts to herself, at least for the moment, and tried her hardest to recover, resting when Casey told her to, drinking often, and trying to preserve her strength for the journey.

  For all her guilt and frustration at causing Casey so much trouble, she very much didn't want to die. She'd promised herself that she was going to live until she found her family again, and she had a hint now, a goal that they were moving towards, and she couldn't give up on that, no matter how much it hurt to do so. So she held on with everything she had, struggled to keep going, to fight, to keep breathing for one more day with Casey's help.

  Two weeks after Casey had cornered her about being ill, two weeks of slow travel and poor conditions and a steadily deteriorating body, Alexa started to realize she was still in deep trouble.

  They had been forced to skirt around the heavily infested Indianapolis. A detour that had taken a heavy toll on Alexa's already badly weakened body, and they were still over one hundred and fifty miles out from the base they were making for, while barely making fifteen to twenty miles a day in travel time if they were lucky.

  She was trying, she really was, but it was too much strain for Alexa to handle, apparently, because her condition fell further still. Her appetite disappeared, and she could barely force herself to eat anything Casey managed to find for them anymore, no matter how much the clone coaxed or outright ordered her to do so.

  It was all she could do to force herself to keep drinking water, now, which Alexa knew was a very bad sign, because she had to stay hydrated to get through this. Except, Alexa was starting to realize with the dull, hazy mentality of somebody truly ill, she probably wasn't going to get through this, not anymore.

  It was a painful realization to come to, but it was, unfortunately, the truth. Alexa was an optimist, but she could add up the facts as well as anybody. They were miles away from any chance of any form of medical treatment, moving too slowly to make a difference, and she was falling apart too rapidly to hope to reach help in time.

  She didn't want to give up, she wanted to keep fighting hard to survive, because she had to get back to mom and dad and Aunt Kate and grandpa, but she doubted she was going to make it that far. She already wouldn't have made it as far as she had, if not for Casey.

  And Casey... Casey was family too, no matter what the circumstances of their meeting were. Alexa wanted to survive for him too, but the fact of the matter was, the harder she fought to hang on, the worse she made things for her adopted brother.

&n
bsp; Casey was already doing too much to try and help her: running himself ragged to provide for a sick, useless person, starving and depriving himself of rest in order to give those scraps of food and sleep to Alexa, risking his life in solo fights against packs of zoms to try and make their campsites safer so there wouldn't be as much risk to his sick companion.

  It was a show of incredible loyalty and it was truly touching that the clone was fighting so hard for her, but it was also wrong. If he kept this up he was going to get himself killed, all over Alexa's dead weight.

  Alexa was not okay with that. It should never have happened this way. She was the one that had promised to look out for Casey, back when she'd first found him abandoned and blind to the world in that pod. She was the one that was supposed to reassure Casey, teach him the ropes, encourage his personal goals and help him reach them.

  She shouldn't be causing Casey this much grief, this much trouble. Most of all, she didn't want Casey wasting his life, still so incredibly short and with so much potential, on her, not when it was clear Alexa was never even going to reach the end of the trip.

  Casey still had options, was strong enough to survive and carve a new place for himself in this world, and could do practically anything he wanted now with his skills and knowledge; it was a crime to chain him to a corpse with an obligation and the very real risk of becoming a corpse himself. It was cruel and selfish and wrong to ask that of Casey at this point; not something a big sister should ever do.

  And she still remembered her role as older sister, blood or not. Casey was still family, and as much as she wanted to find her biological family, she had to protect Casey too. At any cost.

  She figured they'd understand. They'd be sad, but they'd understand, she was sure. She'd done her best; it just wasn't enough. Now she had to act fast to protect the last family member she had close to her before she didn't have the option at all. They'd get it. They would.

  She tried the subtle approach first... as subtle as she could get when her head felt cloudy and talking–breathing–hurt. By now Alexa had accepted the fact that she was not going to make it to help before she died, and had been perfectly aware of the very high probability for the past two days.

  She'd yet to voice her thoughts to Casey, and she doubted the clone was on the same page as her. Casey knew she was sick, and badly enough to be concerned, but Alexa didn't think he knew the extent of it.

  Which was why she knew she had to do something, break the chain before it was too late. Because she knew she was screwed, and for all his abilities and skills Casey couldn't even hope to save her, but Casey would keep trying stubbornly, and Alexa couldn't let him risk himself on a person already marked for death.

  So she tried to broach the subject one night, when Casey had managed to find a four-story business building that was still pretty solid, enough that they could safely light a fire in one of the top floors without major risk of attracting zoms.

  Alexa was curled as close to the fire as she could get without actually being in the fire, wrapped in everything they could possibly find to keep her warm, and yet she still couldn't banish the chill that felt like it stabbed down into her bones, and shivered hard.

  Casey watched her in concern after another failed attempt to get Alexa to eat, refusing to touch the rations he'd set aside for the sick teen despite Alexa's insistence that he not let it go to waste. It was the sight of the dark shadows under Casey's eyes and the way his clothes hung on him more loosely than they used to that finally prompted Alexa to speak.

  “I'm not... I'm not doing so good, LS.”

  Casey frowned at her as the words prompted a new bout of coughing, and growled, “Stop talking, it makes you worse.”

  “I'm really sick,” Alexa said, ignoring the clone's orders. “Like... real sick.”

  “I noticed. Stop talking so you get better. Also, sleep.”

  “I don't think it's gonna help any...”

  Something in her tone must have unsettled Casey, because his eyes narrowed, and he said more ferociously, “It will if you'd actually try to sleep. Stop talking.” There was an unvoiced but painfully loud like this tacked on to the end, and Alexa was aware enough to realize Casey knew what she was trying to get at.

  Alexa fell silent for a few moments. Casey seemed to think she'd had enough of the discussion, and the tension was just starting to leave the clone's shoulders again, when Alexa tried one more time, fighting to get the words out in between the coughs and sharp pains in her chest. “I... LS... you know you don't... owe me anything, for getting you out of that pod... right?”

  Casey frowned at her again, and cocked his head slightly in that way that Alexa had long since learned meant he was listening to something no ordinary human would ever be able to hear.

  His expression shifted to something more concerned a moment later as Alexa continued to try hacking her organs out, and he said softly, in the most reassuring tone he could manage, “Just get some rest, Alexa. We can talk about this later. Just... just sleep.”

  Alexa felt everything inside of herself go dull and numb at the answer. She knew a deflection when she heard one, and Casey hadn't answered her question at all.

  Her worst fears were confirmed... Casey was going to stick with her, out of some sort of obligation to Alexa reinforced by a stupid promise to Blake, even if it was for a pointless cause, even if it killed him. She couldn't let it happen, but subtle was clearly not going to cut it.

  She had to get serious.

  Alexa knew what she had to do now, but with so little energy and with it so hard to focus, it was difficult to come up with how to do it. Still, she gave it a lot of careful thought, as much as she could when she wasn't coughing hard or focusing on breathing or putting one foot in front of another for the short amounts of time she could move under her own power.

  It would be difficult to get anything past Casey, which meant she had to do it carefully and right the first time, and she had to wait for just the right opportunity.

  Fortunately for her–because Alexa wasn't sure how much longer she could hold her strength together–the chance came two days later, in the middle of another heavy storm. Casey had been forced to retreat around noon when the downpour hit them out of nowhere, hauling Alexa with him off the freeway at the first available exit into some town's industrial district.

  They hid away inside an old factory's second floor that Casey had deemed safe for the moment, waiting out the storm while Casey dutifully built up a fire to dry Alexa out and try to get her warm again. But when the rain still hadn't passed hours later and the lightening still flashed and the thunder rolled in the distance, Casey was finally forced to admit they'd be spending the night in that town.

  Casey checked one last time to make sure Alexa was as comfortable and safe as possible before heading out into the wet and the cold that he was mostly impervious to for scavenging and a quick patrol.

  And that was precisely the moment Alexa had been waiting for.

  She'd known she'd have to do this for days now, but the hardest part had been figuring out how to circumvent Casey's hearing, which he nearly always kept tuned these days to listen for sounds of danger or distress back wherever he'd left Alexa.

  Which was clever and all, except it also meant he could listen in if Alexa tried to do anything stupid, and come back to put a stop to it–and Alexa knew he wouldn't hesitate to do so, either, if he thought Alexa was risking herself.

  But the storm and the rain would interfere with his hearing, and hopefully give Alexa just enough cover to do what she needed.

  She hauled herself to her feet through sheer willpower more than anything else. Fortunately, the early retreat meant Alexa had been resting for a few hours already, so she'd been able to recover some of her pitifully limited strength back. It would have to be enough.

  Moving as quickly as she could, she shuffled through her pack, pulling out most of the supplies and leaving anything behind that Casey would need for travel in the future. She kept only
a few things for herself–flashlight, her water bottle, one of the blankets, and the crowbar, because she knew she was going to be dead soon but no way was she was going to die by zombie bite, she still intended to go down fighting if it came to that.

  And she left.

  She felt bad about it, really. Part of it felt like Alexa was running away, and while she always had an affinity for running and found no shame in doing it from a horde of zoms, it felt almost like a betrayal to abandon Casey.

  Especially since Casey had been a great friend and better family; she'd come to enjoy Casey's company, silent and grumpy though it frequently was, and the past few months up until her illness had been some of the best since Z-day hit.

  But it was better this way. Of that, Alexa was certain. She wasn't afraid that she was abandoning Casey to a bad fate; Casey had proven these past few weeks that he was strong, capable and smart enough to survive on his own. And he'd do it even better when he didn't have to keep slowly sacrificing himself for a dying girl.