Savannah's Only Zombie (Book 2): A New Darkness

by Josh Vasquez

  He reached out tenderly for one of her elbows, but she yanked it away before he could touch her.

  “You just got here,” she said.

  He pulled his hand back and crossed his arms across his chest.

  So that’s what this is about, he thought.

  “I know sweetheart,” he said softly. “I know.”

  She moved her right hand from her hip and placed it on her ever-growing belly. Josh tried again to get closer to his wife. He placed one hand over hers and the other reached up to brush her brown hair away from her face. Their eyes met. She leaned her head into his chest and the two of them stood there in silence for what seemed like forever.

  As they stood there in their quietness, both minds raced in thoughts.

  Thoughts about the future.

  Thoughts about their survival

  Thoughts about the baby.

  All of these things whirled like a cyclone of unknown, but the words did not come. They would not come.

  So, after an indeterminate amount of time, Laura finally spoke.

  “Just come back to me. To us.”

  Josh gently pulled her chin up, looking into her wet brown eyes.

  “I will. I came back to you the first time,” he said.

  “I know,” she said, her eyes shifting downward.

  “Hey,” he whispered softly.

  She looked back up to him smiling.

  “With everything I’ve put you through,” he said. “I plan on making it up to you for the rest of my life. And I don’t plan on that ending anytime soon.”

  ***

  Jeremy was leaning against the truck when Josh finally came out of the house. He came strolling down the stairs with a pep in his step. Jeremy had been listening to Chris talk over the perimeter with Lexx and Tori. Around the house and the yard area was a small, wooden fence. It was mostly aesthetic, but could serve as a good last line of defense in case the outer fences were breached. The outer fence was much stouter, but would also need work. Its purpose had been to keep living people out. Living people would have been deterred by having to climb over a four-foot high wood post fence. Living dead people, not so much. While Jeremy and Josh were gone, the three of them would work on the outer fences with what tools they did have. Josh stopped at Chris to tell him something before making his way over to Jeremy.

  “You ready to go?” He asked.

  “Yeah. Do I need to bring anything else?” Jeremy asked, holding up his machete.

  “No. That should do just fine. I’m bringing one of the hunting rifles just in case we run into a larger group, but hopefully we won’t bump into too many out there.”

  Josh turned around to motion to Chris. He nodded and the three of them walked over to the back of the truck. There was a stack of boards and fence posts nearby and they began to load them onto the back of the truck.

  “We’re gonna give them a ride to the outer fence,” Josh said, as he began to climb into the driver’s seat.

  Jeremy nodded and made his way to the other side of the truck cab. After he climbed in, there was a banging on the side gates, signaling that the trio in the back were ready to go. He looked through the back window. Lexx was crouching down next to it, and when he saw Jeremy looking, made a weird smile baring all his teeth.

  Once they dropped off Lexx, Tori, and Chris, the two of them pulled out onto the old Georgia highway. They rode in silence for a few minutes, before Josh switched on the radio and began flipping between stations. Every single one filled with the same noisy static. Josh switched off the radio.

  “All these radio stations play the same crap nowadays,” he said.

  Jeremy chuckled.

  “Yeah they do,” he added.

  A few more beats of silence.

  “So, is the zombie apocalypse everything you thought it would be?” Jeremy asked.

  “Ha. No, not really,” Josh said with a grin.

  The grin faded quickly however.

  “You could say I was a pretty die-hard zombie fan before, but I wasn’t ever one of those people who wanted it to happen. It used to bug the crap out of me to see bumper stickers that said, ‘The hardest part about the zombie apocalypse will be pretending that I’m not excited.’ Seriously? If you were excited about the dead coming back to life and eating your family members, then you didn’t understand the freaking zombie apocalypse. At all. I didn’t have stickers all over my truck. ‘Zombie hunter?’ Please.”

  “Yeah, or ‘Zombie Defense Squad,’ Jeremy said. “When I first left my house, I saw a small group of kids with t-shirts that said that. They were actually pretty efficient. They just didn’t account for the truck that jumped the curb and ran them over.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. All the people who thought they were prepared for the end of the world. They had the supplies, the guns, the t-shirts, but you know what they didn’t have? Common freaking sense. I’m one hundred percent positive that is one reason things went so bad, so quick.”

  “So, you didn’t have a plan?” Jeremy asked.

  Josh smiled his boyish smile.

  “Of course I had a plan. But you know my plans, simple. I didn’t start stocking up on MRE’s, ammo, and water purification tablets. The plan was this: Get out of the city. Get away from the highly populated areas of the world and keep a low profile. Groups are good, but small groups are better. Of course, I thought it would be just my family, but having the three of y’all with us will be a great asset to have.”

  “Thanks,” Jeremy said. “We really are thankful for you taking us in.”

  “Not a problem.

  Jeremy turned his head to look out the window. There was finally a break in the trees and acres of cotton fields covered the landscape with white. It almost looked like snow. Jeremy wondered how much money in cotton they were passing. And none of it would get picked. It would just stay there and do whatever cotton does when it doesn’t get picked. Rot.

  How many other crops are going through the same thing? There has to be some farmers still alive. But how much is just going to not be harvested and just left to decay? If things ever get back to normal, will there be any food left? Or anything left to farm for that matter? Or anyone left to farm for?

  Jeremy tried to not be a pessimist, but when everything around you seems to fall apart, it was kind of hard not to. It was something he developed in the past few years of life and more so this past week. If his parent’s marriage could fall apart, his dad become a royal douche, and for undead monsters to rip apart his mother in a feeding frenzy, why couldn’t America’s farmland take too much of a hit where it couldn’t recover?

  “You alright?”

  Josh’s question snapped Jeremy out of his downward spiral of thoughts.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. I guess. Just thinking,” he stammered.

  “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

  Jeremy thought about whether he should share everything he was thinking about.

  “Do you, do you think we’ll make it?”

  “Depends,” Josh said, as he turned onto another road. “Do you mean us personally or like humans in general?”

  “Um, both.”

  “Well, as far as mankind goes, I don’t think this is the end for us. I’m a little rusty on my Eschatology-”

  “Your what?” Jeremy interrupted.

  “Haha, big word for Bible end times prophecy. But I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the Bible about this. Doesn’t mean it could be getting near the end, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”

  He paused.

  “As for us, I don’t know.”

  Jeremy was surprised by his answer. Josh normally seemed so sure of his answers. Even if he was wrong, he still seemed to stick to his gut reactions. Like with leaving Lexx.

  “You don’t know?” Jeremy asked, adding extra emphasis to the word “you.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  More silence passed.

  “Um,” Jeremy started. “Would you like to expand on tha
t a little more?”

  Josh never took his eyes of the road.

  “It’s just that… I was so sure we would be fine. Between me, Chris who was an Army Ranger and my father-in-law, I thought we had a great chance. And our girls are pretty resilient too. But… But with losing Hailey, I just don’t know. It just seems to have impacted everyone on such a deep emotional level, that I’m worried about them losing hope.”

  “Do you still think there is hope?” Jeremy asked.

  “Of course I do. The whole Christian faith is built on hope. We place our hope in the fact that Jesus overcame death and sin. And I’m pretty sure that means the kind of death we’ve been dealing with as well.”

  Jeremy tried not to roll his eyes.

  “I’m not trying to bag on your religion, I just don’t know if I understand it all the way yet, but how do you know that’s all true?” He asked.

  Josh broke eye contact with the road and smiled at Jeremy.

  “Because I once was dead and now I’m alive.”

  The words sounded familiar to Jeremy. They made him think of singing in his mother’s church.

  What was that song called?

  He searched his brain for the answer as Josh turned around another corner. He lost his train of thought as Josh slammed on the brakes. In the road in front of them was a stalled out car, with all four doors open, and a trail of blood leading away from it.

  ***

  The two of them stood in front of the abandoned vehicle. Whoever owned it was now long gone, except for the small chunks of meat left in the seats. Jeremy couldn’t take his eyes off the child booster seat.

  It looked like most of the belongings were still there.

  “Let’s take what we can use and get going,” Josh said quietly. “They won’t be needing it.”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “You still have hope?” He asked.

  “Yes, but I have ‘Come Lord Jesus quickly’ on repeat in my mind right now.

  Chapter Eight

  A cool wind chilled the sweat that collected on Tori’s forehead. She used her shirtsleeve to wipe away the wetness, leaving a dark wet stain. They had been at work for what seemed like forever, but in reality, it had only been an hour since Jeremy and Josh left. She glanced over at the pile of wood they brought with them. It was beginning to dwindle. If they wanted more wood, it looked like they would have to start chopping down trees. Some of the smaller ones would make good posts.

  Lexx laughed at something Chris said. The two of them were working ten feet down from Tori.

  If you call what they’re doing ‘working.’ More like, ‘talking with an occasional hammer swing.’

  As if he heard her thoughts, Lexx looked over and grinned. Tori forced a smile back. He didn’t seem to notice her trouble and turned back to continue his conversation with Chris. Tori let her smile fade. She swung her hammer into the nearest nail. She had been following behind the dynamic duo as they secured the posts and replaced them if necessary. It was her job to reapply the crossing boards taken down and to add new ones where older boards had fallen away. She didn’t mind the task, it wasn’t that. She didn’t know what it was.

  Get yourself together girl, she told herself.

  Lexx let out another obnoxious laugh. Tori felt her neck muscles tighten.

  “Do you two think we should maybe keep it down?” She asked, trying not to let her tone betray her.

  “Sorry babe, Chris was just telling me this story about when Josh drove a ditch trencher off the back of a truck. Hilarious,” Lexx said.

  “Yeah, as funny as that may be, we probably don’t want to attract any attention. We’re already making enough noise with the hammering.”

  “She makes a good point,” Chris said. “We’ll try to keep it down. I’ll save my Josh stories for later.”

  “There’s more?” Lexx asked.

  “Oh, I have a whole bunch of them,” Chris said.

  “Sweet.”

  With that, their conversations got much quieter. Tori put her focus back into the work in front of her. The repairs they were making were just the first steps in the fortifying up of the perimeter. First, they would make any needed repairs to the existing fence. It would serve as the support for the next phase, which would be to place 4x6 pieces of plywood around the entirety of the fence line. The slick sides of the plywood would make it difficult for the slower zombies to climb over. The only thing Josh worried about was if it were a large group of undead, the sheer weight of bodies would push through the wooden structure in time. And of course, the fence wouldn’t do much against runners. But if either of those two outcomes happened, the plan was still the same: run.

  Tori almost laughed to herself as she thought about a pregnant woman trying to escape from the zombies. It was just ridiculous. She understood there was nothing that could be done about the baby; it just worried her because it was one more thing to slow them down. If it came to having to escape, which sometimes meant having to worry about yourself, how much could a pregnant woman do?

  She thought about the Lumberjack. After she repeatedly wanted to leave him behind, the group always decided to take him one step further.

  “We won’t leave him here.”

  “No, we won’t leave him here either.”

  “No, we’ll wait until he dies.”

  Ben… If you had just let him die, maybe you’d still be with us right now. And maybe we wouldn’t be here. Maybe we’d be at your parent’s house right now.

  Tori felt her eyes begin to moisten.

  C’mon girl! Get yourself together!

  She quickly rubbed away the forming tears and took a deep breath. She slammed the hammer again, taking out her frustration on the next nail. The nail bent from her unfocused hit. She used the hammer’s claw to pull it out, and began to try and straighten it out on top of the fence post. Once it was as straight as she could get it, she tried again to nail it into the wood. This time, it went in without problem.

  “Yeah, I did some time in the Army.”

  Tori felt herself tighten again. The words echoed in her head as if they were shouted into a cavernous ravine. Over and over, she heard them. It was the voice that struck a nerve. It wasn’t Chris’s, who Josh had explained earlier once served as an Army Ranger.

  Meh, she had thought at the time. Being raised by a Marine Drill Instructor may have left her slightly biased, but Tori’s dislike of the Army Branch was no more different from a Georgia Bulldogs fan’s hatred of the University of Florida. It was just a deep seated rivalry that she loved to get vocal about, especially after she had a few beers in her. Marines and Army: same team, different styles.

  But the voice she heard wasn’t from Chris.

  It was Lexx.

  Her mouth fell open as she listened to the man she… she…

  Liked? She thought. Slept with? Loved?

  All the words seemed t0 collide together and the last word ran smack dab into another nerve.

  “Yeah, college wasn’t for me and the Army seemed like a good idea at the time. Stable pay, good benefits, plus the Cold War just ended, so we weren’t really fighting anyone. Then that dick Saddam decided to roll into Kuwait. Anyways, I was on the ground not soon long after the start. I don’t have to tell you what it’s like, you were over there. You know,” Lexx said.

  Chris nodded. His eyes glazed over quickly as he went to a distant place and then returned.

  “Anyways,” Lexx continued. “Turns out I’m not too good at taking orders. Well, bullshit orders. I was the lead driver in a Humvee convoy and I had strict orders to take us through this sketchy little town. I don’t know if it was my gut, or maybe the looks on every civilian’s face we passed, but something told me to take a different route. I know y’all are all religious and whatnot, maybe it was divine intervention, who knows. I led us around the town on an alternate route and we reached our destination safely in one piece. Despite this, my SO was pissed. He charged me for disobeying a direct order and that there wasn’t enou
gh intel on the path I took. Ha. Intel? Well, intel later showed that we were headed into an ambush.”

  Lexx sighed.

  “I was still discharged though, but they gave me a honorable discharge, just because my “mistake” saved everyone in the convoy’s lives.”

  He was in the Army? Tori thought. Why didn’t he tell me? He knows how I feel about the Army. He knows my father is a Marine. Why didn’t he tell me that?

  Well Tori, maybe he didn’t want to because he did know how you felt and he didn’t want to bring it up yet, she answered herself. And seeing that you’re talking to yourself right now, maybe that was a good idea on his part.

  She let her frustration out on the next few nails. These nails gave her no hesitation and sunk straight into to the wood, trying to avoid the fury of the hammer-wielder.

  “That’s crazy,” Chris said.

  “Yeah, crazy. No, crazy was coming back to find my loving fiancé banging our landlord for rent. Not that we didn’t have money mind you, my paychecks went into the bank just fine. She said she was lonely and had needs, you know, basic cheating whore stuff. Hell of a homecoming.”

  “Oh man, sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, so there I was: twenty one, un-engaged, and jobless. It took a real toll on me at the time. I went from small job to small job, never really working out wherever I went. And as far as women went, well, it took some time to even think about serious relationships again. It was always just quick-flings and no strings attached kinda deals. And…”

  Lexx’s voice seemed to fade away in Tori’s mind as the frustration hit new levels.

  He was fucking engaged!?!

  This final revelation of the man she had feelings for had sought out and pierced through her ever-loving last nerve. She swung the hammer again, this time with enough force to send the nail deep into the wood and the hammer’s head splintering off and flying off into the woods. Tori let out an exasperated breath and stormed off in the direction of the hammer’s head.

  Lexx looked at Chris with a confused look, held up his finger motioning for one minute, and then took off after her.