Ophelia

by Briana Rain

  I bet they've seen similar exchanges at lunch. You know, with the other elementary children. The key word, here, being children.

  Puck and Vi helped me shove the water in the back, making sure to not crush anything. And, without telling the others, I put a few of the Gold Fish packs in my bag,“for emergencies”. After that, I also rested my head against the rattling window, and quickly slipped into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 14: Chicago

  CrackSquishBangThunkRipWhoos–

  “Thank you for everything, Clyde.”

  Mom was talking and the car was stopped. I had woken up from a dream, or nightmare, that I couldn't remember.

  “Much obliged, ma’am.” A seatbelt clicked as Clyde answered.

  He was gathering his things, and about to open the door and leave. Leave us.

  I mean, I understood, I guess. Everyone in the Apocalypse had their own plans, their own mission and ultimate destination in mind. But, that still didn't mean that I wanted him gone. I mean, having him in the group was a good strategic move. Two women and two children didn't really make for the zombie apocalypse dream team, even if I was part of it. And, when were we gonna find another guy with pretty decent intentions? I mean, he was the first one we’d met who hadn’t tried to rob us, or worse, and it seemed like he genuinely wanted to help us.

  “You're leaving?” My voice had an ugly crack in it from being asleep, so I cleared my throat before continuing. “We're just dropping him off?”

  Out of my window was Chicago, home of... okay, I don't really know much about Chicago, or what it's home to, but the point is, we were here.

  “O, don't,” Mom said. “Just—“

  Just let him go?

  “Mom, he saved my life! He literally stopped Crazies from killing me, several times. Without him, we'd still be at that traffic jam with no gas. And... And he made sure I wasn't spotted by a stray Crazy when we were getting those hoses, and...” I took an enormous breath, “Mom, we cannot just drop him off. He was the one who carried back that water and shot those three Crazies and... we owe him help right now. And if you don't, then I do.”

  I clicked my seatbelt off, too, not looking at Clyde, who was silent and unmoving in the passenger seat in front of me. The twins followed his lead.

  “O. You have to trust that I know what's best for you right now. I am your mother. We can't take unnecessary risks—“

  “Clyde,” I said, “what are you going to do when you find your family, or can't find them?”

  In the mirror, he looked surprised by my sudden addressing of him, so he didn't answer as quick as I wanted him to.

  “Would you want to join us again?”

  That question shocked him. Guessing by his deer-in-headlights look, I don't think he expected an invite back.

  “Well, I hadn't even thought of that, if I'm being honest. I figured you folks would be long gone by then,” he answered awkwardly.

  Yeah, he definitely didn't expect to stay with us.

  “But if you could join us again, would you?” I didn't look at Mom, even though she was turned around in her seat, most likely glaring at me.

  “I suppose so. You folks seem a lot more decent than others I've met out here. So yes, I would come back, given I’d have the chance.”

  “Mom, not as many people out there are going to be as nice as we are, or as Clyde is. We need him Mom. He knows all of these things that we don't know and... and he's a guy. People think twice about messing with guys but, they don't with girls. We need him to come back, and...” She was soooo not going to like this part. I braced myself for her yelling and disappointment, “And I have to go with him.”

  “No chance in—“

  “I have to go with him because that's what's right. I have to do what's right, for as long as I can, before all this takes that away from me. I have to Mom.”

  Her opened mouth made her look at a loss for words. Probably because I was, in some way, right.

  And how do you argue with that?

  I grabbed my pack and went to pull the door handle, but a click from a button on the drivers side locked it. I manually unlocked the door, but Mom locked it again.

  You've got to be kidding me. I remember playing this game when I was the twins’ age.

  She sighed, and turned the car's engine back on, driving away from this street. She turned from Roosevelt, the street we were on, to Clark. She didn't want to make much noise with the car or bump into one of the other cars haphazardly parked in the street.

  Car alarms suck. Why do we even have them?

  There were so many buildings here. I had lived in the suburbs all my life, so I’d never really been exposed to anything this big. Or grand. As big and numerous as these buildings were, some of them had hundreds of intricate designs around the doors and windows. It was kind of amazing. I mean, back where I lived, we had the downtown area, with tall buildings you could see for miles, but this was so different. There were big, tall skyscrapers as well as short, stout ones that were still bigger than anything back in my town. It wasn't how I’d imagined a “big city” to look like. There were trees and plants here and there, a pinch and dash of nature in a mostly industrialized corner of the world. I found myself hypnotized by all of it.

  It didn’t last for long, because there were still signs of the end of the world here, too. The missing sounds of people, cars and the gentle hum constantly in the background created by engines and other electronic things. There were broken windows and doors, and things littering the streets that you wouldn't normally see, like TVs and ample amounts of rotten food. The smoke and great fires from the other side of town, were also telltale signs that something has gone terribly wrong, along with the smell of sewage, no doubt flooding into somewhere, probably the subway tunnels

  Do they call them subways here? Or metros? Who knows.

  The occasional lone Crazy racing across the street in the distance made my chest hurt. The Crazies in general were a pretty solid sign that civilization as we’d known it had collapsed. Their roars and shrieks, their decaying stink leaving a constant, faint trace in the air, along with the trails of bodies and blood they left behind in their savage wake. Fortunately, the bodies were almost unrecognizable as human, with only scattered bones and small amounts of meat and tissue still lingering on them.

  I wished that I could've seen this city in its prime, as Mom turned onto Congress, then quickly Dearborn, Clyde leading the expedition with a map of his own on his lap. I tried to keep the street names in the back of my mind, just in case I had to get back to the highway. Mom pulled into a parking lot on Clyde's orders.

  After stuffing the map into his pack, he started to get out, only to be stopped by my mom.

  “You will bring her back.” She told, not asking him. Not too sentimental, and very threatening. In a way, I'm grateful for that. No tears.

  Because tears would mean that something bad was going to happen. And a goodbye would imply that I would be leaving for a while. None of these things were going to happen.

  Clyde nodded several times, and paused, as if he was going to say something, but decided against it. Instead he grabbed his things, and left the car.

  I went to follow, Viola caught my hand. Before she could say anything, and before she made me cry, I quickly reassured her that it would all be okay.

  No tears. Tears mean bad things. Nothing bad’s going to happen.

  Before Lucky or Mom could do anything, I got out of the car. After taking a deep breath, I clicked the door shut as quietly as I could. Mom gave me a quick nod through the windshield. No tears.

  Clyde had waited for me, and together we walked away. After a few steps, I allowed myself one more look at Mom and watched as she pulled something, probably one of the two pictures she’d brought along, and clutched it in her hands while staring at it. She didn’t look up at me. If she did, I had already turned back to face what was ahead of me. I would need every ounce of concentration I had and then some to get through this alive.
>
  Clyde eyebrows were so crinkled that they were almost touching as he readjusted the strap of his rifle. “It's just up here, I think.”

  By some common sense agreement, we kept to the shadows created by the side of the first building we came across. Clyde said that it was right across the street in front of us, and I was surprised on how short the walk was for us, but grateful.

  But then we heard shrieking. Very, very close shrieking. So, of course, nothing was going to be easy. Why would something be easy in the Apocalypse?

  There were Crazies coming, and coming in fast. We couldn’t outrun them, so we had to hide. We were standing on the corner of a four-way intersection, so that didn't leave us many options. There were buildings all around us. There were stairs to our left that led to something— I think some train tracks above us.

  Wait, the tracks.

  There were pillars on all corners of the intersection, including the one right in front of us.

  I grabbed Clyde's arm, which was more like grabbing a granite countertop rather than a human arm, and pushed/pulled/threw him towards the pillar. He got the message and started climbing it, hoisting himself as high as he could, his feet and fingers finding holds that I didn't know we're there. His shovel clanked against the metal column, and he swore under his breath. If the Crazies weren't coming this way before, they definitely were now. I followed. Or, I tried to. I couldn't quite reach the first hold that Clyde had so easily reached because a sign was blocking multiple footholds that were crucial for me climbing this. Clyde only managed to make the climb because he was so tall, and I, on the other hand, was much shorter than the southern man. My dirty fingertips could barely skim the first hold when I jumped, but even if I could’ve reached the hold, I had, like, zero upper body strength. I knew for a fact that I wouldn't have been able to pull myself up.

  About halfway up, Clyde turned back to see me struggling to get up. He was hanging on to a stoplight bolted to the pillar, high above me. The Crazies were getting closer. There was no way he could get back down, help me up, and both of us get to the top, which was about fifteen or twenty feet in the air, in time.

  So, I ran.

  “O! O, get back here! O!” Clyde’s voice started out with a panicked whisper climbed to a distressed call, echoing throughout the empty street under the metal bridge. There was a sign and a stoplight on that pillar, blocking me. But on the next one, across the street from the building whose shadows we’d stayed in. I was actually able to climb this one. The metal weapon I’d tucked between my back and backpack, like Clyde did, also clanked against the pillar as I climbed. I wish I could say I cared, but I didn't. The screaming was close. Too close. Too loud. Too many.

  Clyde, who’d started to climb down, like an idiot, was now scrambling up and trying to find a place where he wouldn't fall before the Crazies came around the corner. I, myself, was just trying not to focus on how much distance there was between me and the faded crosswalk paint on the street. The ledge was narrow. Too narrow. I had to get away from this section, and across the entire street where there was more room for me.

  I was afraid. Terrified. By the amount of demonic shrieking headed our way, there had to be hundreds of them. Running. Stampeding. I was afraid that when they came this way, they would shake the bridge. They didn’t tend to move out of the way of obstacles in their path, like we humans have the common sense to do. If there were that many, all of them crashing into the metal pillars...

  No, I wasn't afraid of the whole thing crashing down, but I didn’t think I had the balance to stay up here. If a horde came through here and shook the metal... I wouldn’t stand a chance. So I had to get across the huge four-lane, Chicago street. Oh, and it had to be done before the Crazies, now louder than ever with the help of a metal tunnel-like bridge to amplify their echoes, got to us.

  So I took off my backpack, held it in one hand, with my bat in the other, and started to cross the narrow ledge. On one hand, I could kind of lean against the wall behind me for support. On the other hand, the ledge was so narrow that no support would help me if I made a wrong move.

  It's a bummer to report that I didn't make it. My feet carried me just over halfway before I spotted the first Crazy, coming out from under where Clyde was nestled, somewhat comfortably, by the looks of it. Also, by the looks of it, he looked worried and pissed off.

  Whoopsie daisy.

  There was nothing for me to do except gently, silently, set my bag on the ledge against the wall, and clutch my bat to my chest like a life preserver. The last thing I wanted was for it to clank off anything and alert the enemy of my position.

  A closer look at Clyde and my adjusted eyes told me that he not only looked worried, but he also had his gun trained on the first Crazy, which had run into the middle of the street below us.

  With the way the bridge was built, I don't think they would’ve been able to track down the source of a gunshot. It would just echo too much.

  Right?

  It had its nose up in the air, but it's eyes were facing forward. Good. Because if it’s eyes wandered up, I’d be the first thing it saw. Then it would shriek, alert the others to where we were, and if enough of them came over here, and started shaking the pillars...

  Even though the first Crazy kept its mouth shut, more Crazies were trickling in, sniffing the air in hopes of finding their next meal.

  Now, I didn’t know much about Clyde, only having met him twenty-four hours ago, but if I had any money, I would’ve bet that he was getting ready to shoot them. All of them. Or at least take as many out as he could before... no. No way I'm letting nay of that scenario play out.

  The part of the ledge that had more room, also had no wall to shove me more towards the edge. Since my crazy ideas had worked so far, I decided to try this one and see where it took me.

  When life gives you crazy, you have to be crazier.

  I was standing just before the wall behind me ended, so I wouldn't have to move too much, which was pretty cool. You know, less chance of attracting deadly attention to myself. The bungee cord in my bag should’ve been right on the top, considering it was one of the last things I put in it.

  Moving your arms that slow was harder than it looked. To slightly bend down and grab my pack with one hand, while the other held my bat... it was a challenging task. One that took several minutes and during those minutes, Clyde frantically shook his head, begging me not to do whatever I was planning on doing.

  But once I started, there was no stopping me.

  The Crazies were congregating under us, in the intersection. More and more were joining every second, obviously picking up some sort of clue that we were here

  My money’s on Clyde’s smell.

  It would only be a matter of time before one of them looked up, so once I got my arm up, cord in hand, I ignored Clyde and tucked my bat in my armpit. The movement made me wobble on the ledge, and I started hyperventilating as I regained my limited balance.

  Normally, or if this were a movie, I’d would’ve whispered over and over to myself, don’t look down and you can do it. But this was not a movie. Me looking down is what motivated my actions, which I had no idea as to whether I could accomplish them or not. I hoped it would. At this point, hope was all I had.

  Quickly, so that I wouldn’t wobble for too long this time, I put the hooks at either end of my fingers on both hands, leaned dangerously towards where the wall ended, stretched the elastic, and let go.

  For a quick moment, as I corrected my balance, there was nothing. Then I heard the fruits of my labor and metal hitting metal. The cord clanked off several bars of metal before probably hitting the ground somewhere behind me and beyond the wall. Multiple Crazies heard it, and screamed their amplified, echoing, demonic roars and bolted in the general direction of the noise. All the other Crazies who had arrived during the execution of my brilliant plan also roared, and also followed. They kept coming and coming... Forget hundreds. There were thousands. All stampeding blindly towards where the othe
rs ahead of them were going. Several infected ran straight off the tracks above us, only to be swallowed into the swarm as quickly as they’d appeared. It made me glad that neither of us had thought to go up there, because we both would have definitely died.

  At this point, even if one of them looked up and saw me, their shriek would be drowned out, and if they stopped, they would surely be run over.

  My ears rang. It was so, so loud. I felt like crying. It was like a never-ending bomb going off. I wondered what my family was doing. If they had taken cover on the car floor, if they had moved, or if everything was fine and dandy.

  Over time, the Crazies went from a jammed crowd, to slightly spaced out, to very spaced out, to just trickling in, until they stopped coming altogether. The shrieks must’ve faded enough into the distance, because Clyde deemed it safe to start his shimmy across the ledge and down the pillar. I, of course, took longer than he did to complete the same action. If you ask me, I think my ledge was more narrow than his. He stood at the bottom of the pillar, his things in a pile a few feet away, arms extended, ready to catch me if I fell.

  Which, I didn't, of course.

  As soon as my feet landed on the pavement, Clyde came over and gave me a quick, awkward hug that lasted, like, two seconds, looking peeved.

  Well. That was stressful.

  My chest hurt. Back at home, years ago, before all this was even a possibility, I had some anxiety problems. It got to the point where my chest would hurt so much that the pain would make me cry. I was prescribed medication for it, which was at the bottom of my nightstand drawer, collecting dust because I hadn’t needed the stuff in, like, six months. Eventually, I learned other ways to help myself, like tea, and stupid breathing things.

  Point is, I’d have given a lot right to have that bottle with me.

  “You gotta start knocking that off, O.”

  I tried to control my breathing. One-two-three, three-two-one.