Tag

by Everheart, AJ

  “Where did you learn all this?” I ask, as she rigs up a tripwire on the stairs.

  “My father. I’m an only child, and he always wanted a boy…” She shrugs.

  She shows us to a dormitory on the second floor, and man, am I happy to see a bed, an actual bed. She turns to leave, but I grab her arm; I may trust her to a degree, but the others don’t.

  She stares at me for a moment as though I’m burning her skin before she yanks her arm free. “My room is upstairs.”

  “You need to stay with me.”

  She frowns, and I feel a little bit sorry for her. We’ve invaded her home, drawn attention to her hiding spot, and now, I was going to stop her from sleeping in her own bed. But safety is more important than her feelings, and this is the zombie fucking apocalypse.

  “Tonight, you stay down here,” I command. I’m not going to argue about this. I need to keep an eye on her, and she needs to be where the others can see her.

  “Fine,” she hisses as she claims a bed.

  I take the one next to her and push it closer so the two are almost touching. Mia says nothing but flashes me an angry look.

  It doesn’t take long for everyone to fall asleep, and soon, the room is filled with the sound of soft snores―except in the bed next to me. It’s like I can hear Mia’s brain ticking over in the darkness, I can hear her planning her escape.

  “You know you’re safer with us, don’t you?”

  She lets out a small hmph noise and rolls over to face me. The moonlight hits her face as it peers in through the window.

  “Nowhere is safe anymore. No one.”

  “Maybe, but we’ve got a better chance together.”

  “What do your tattoos mean? The ones on your hands?” she whispers, changing the topic of our inevitable doom.

  “Sink or swim,” I say, as I run my fingers over the words in the darkness. “I learned early on that these are our two options in life. Either you let the tide drag you under or you fight against the current and you swim.”

  She says nothing but reaches out and gently touches my knuckles. Her breathing is heavy, and I know she’s wrestling her inner demons. The warmth of her hand is welcoming, and I place my other hand over the top. In the dark, in this moment, I don’t feel so alone in the world that’s gone to shit.

  “I was nothing, a doss about with a criminal record before this,” I admit. “I promised I’d never sink again, I’m a fighter like you.”

  I have an admiration for this girl, this teenager who has survived alone for the last twelve months. I’m only twenty-three, and some days I wanted to give up, especially as things at base had gotten worse.

  I remember trying to survive in London, hiding and scavenging food, but there were zombies everywhere. It felt like there wasn’t anywhere I could turn without facing a half-rotten corpse with gnashing teeth. The children were the worst, they made my chest ache, and I was filled with a rage I couldn’t control when I saw them. How could anyone do this? I remember when I’d seen my first baby, it was horrific. I’d been raiding a house in the suburbs, it had been a nice house once, with a driveway and a pretty front garden. Inside had already been ransacked a few times, there was blood and graffiti on the walls, furniture had been overturned, and it was a mess. I had heard something move upstairs, so I’d crept up the stairs armed with a baseball bat and a knife. I’d pushed open the door to one of the bedrooms, decorated in soft pastel blues with an elephant painted on the wall. A crib sat in the right-hand corner of the room, and that’s when I heard its half-gurgled cries. I knew, in my heart I knew what I’d see before I pulled the blanket off, but I still wasn’t prepared. The zombie films never showed the decaying, crazed babies. Their tiny clenched fists as they tried to squirm closer to you, to flesh, and the frustrated little cries when they couldn’t move. That’s when I decided I needed to leave the city. I needed a way out. I began looking for others, survivors, and I met Lee, who’d heard of a place out in the countryside near Wales. It was only a farm, with two small barns, but it quickly became home.

  The silence was starting to gnaw at me, not hearing from Basecamp was like a whisper in the back of my head. ‘Run. Danger. They’re gone. All of them.’ It was playing on a loop, and the longer the radio silence went on, the louder the voice got. This world was a fucked-up mess, and now, whatever optimism I had once was gone, but I needed to keep it together for the others. We would follow protocol, the plans we made each time we left the farm. First, I just had to get through tonight.

  I start to drift off not long after midnight, I could hear the chiming of a clock somewhere in the building as my eyes felt heavy and my breathing slowed. I was in that half-state, where you can tell you’re not entirely asleep but you’re not fully awake either, when I felt a shift beside me. I wait as she sits up slowly, as quiet as a mouse, and she pulls her shoes on. She goes to pull her school jumper over her head when I snake an arm around her waist and pull her into my bed. She freezes, going as stiff as a board, and for a moment, I think I’ve made the wrong decision, but as I’m about to release her, she relaxes.

  “Where are you going, Mia?” I whisper in her ear, her back against my stomach.

  She wriggles against me, and I tighten my grip. With a low hiss, she drops her jumper to the floor, kicks off her shoes, and brings her feet up onto the bed.

  “Clearly nowhere.”

  “Good girl,” I say, keeping my voice quiet as my lips brush against the shell of her ear. “If you leave, I can’t save you from the others.”

  A cough comes from the other end of the room, adding weight to the words I just murmured along her skin. She smells clean, like soap and something sweeter. I forgot what clean smelled like, shower gel wasn’t really a priority back at base, but here, she must still have supplies.

  “Why are you trying to save me?” She wriggles for a moment before settling in as my little spoon.

  “I like you. Now shush, sleep.” I kiss the back of her head, I don’t know why. Maybe it was my half-asleep brain, maybe I was craving intimacy, but I feel her body relax in my arms as she exhales, and a small smile tugs at my lips.

  Chapter Six

  Mia

  I wake with my head on Alex’s chest, our legs intertwined as we cling to each other on the tiny single bed. The others start stirring, so I slide back into my own bed, Alex letting out a soft moan as I withdraw my warmth from him. He was a stranger. An invader to my safe haven. So why did I want to trust him? Why was I comfortable letting him get close to me? I’d been alone for months, I hadn’t seen another person in a long time, and yet, here I was letting Alex hold me. I could feel the walls I’d spent my whole life building crumbling away. I had never been a people person, never had friends, and for some reason, he liked me. He liked me.

  I try not to think about it like some giddy schoolgirl as I get dressed. I feel a hint of sadness because I was a schoolgirl, but the zombie outbreak had robbed me of that. It had taken what remained of my youth and shat all over it. There was no time in this new world for crushes, first kisses, proms, or spooning.

  I ignore the others as I begin preparing breakfast. Somehow, I’d managed to keep the school's chickens alive, which came in handy as I made some sort of scrambled egg. I didn’t have milk or butter, but it would have to do, as I scraped it onto plates and waited for them all to finish eating.

  “What’s up with you?” Karen asks, eyeing me up as she pushes the egg around with her fork.

  “What do you mean?” I look at her hard face and wonder why she’s always so angry. I take a sip of my water and ignore Alex watching me from across the table.

  She frowns. “Why’re you being so nice today?”

  “Because if I’m going to stick around, I may as well make myself useful.”

  “Sticking around?” she scoffs.

  I don't reply, I’m not going to argue with that sour-faced bitch, she could keep all her snarky comments and her attitude. After a few moments of awkward silence, I stand and grab my cr
ossbow back off Donovan. He lets me take it with a grin.

  “I’m going to check my perimeter.”

  “I’ll join you,” a voice says as I walk out of the dining room, and I don’t even have to look to know it’s Alex.

  We walk along the wall twice, making sure all my traps are set, and harvest some carrots along with a squirrel from one of my traps. Alex talks to me as we go, telling me about Basecamp and life in London after the outbreak. He finds it ironic that Valentine’s Day was the trigger day—a day that’s supposed to be filled with love was filled with sickness and carnage. Every now and again, he checks his radio, but there never seems to be any reply. I can see his face drop every time he turns it back off.

  The others eventually come out and find us, and Lee takes the food inside, ready for lunch later, while Donovan hands Alex a baseball bat and a large knife.

  “It’s time, mate,” he says, his eyes flicking over me. “Let's go see what’s down the lane.”

  Alex looks back over his shoulder at me. “Are you coming?”

  I nod, even though I’m not entirely sure what’s awaiting us, I know it isn’t going to be pretty.

  The three of us leave out the small side gate, and Ethan sees us off. He hands Alex a small flare gun, growling at him to be careful. He glares at me, they don't trust me. While Alex and Donovan seemed to be warming towards me, the others are still suspicious. They think I'm leading them into a trap or some sort of sick trick. If only they knew.

  Lee and Dai perch on the fire escape, acting as lookouts as we disappear down the driveway. Slowly, we make our way down the lane, no one utters a word, and I'm not even entirely sure I'm still breathing, afraid to make too much noise.

  We spot a zombie in the woodlands to our right, and Donovan signals something to Alex before he creeps towards the tree line. The creature, once human, is now just a mindless, rotting, dirty shell and has its back to us, so it's easy for Donovan to thrust his knife straight into its head. Just like I had done with Susan. We keep moving as he joins us, coming up to a bend in the road. In the fields to our left, something moves, the cracking of a twig is followed by a low guttural moan, and I know a zombie is nearby. It can probably smell us by now, but it has yet to see us. Zombies rely on smell and sound because once they hit a certain stage of decay their site seems to fail, the colour fading as their eyes turn into white, watery holes in their face.

  Alex finds it first as he makes an action like he's drawing a bow back, and I realise he wants me to take out this one. My hands are trembling as I draw back the string―my bow has been armed since we left the school. I only have one shot at this, so I can’t afford to miss. I exhale slowly, waiting for that thing to come into my line of sight. As it does, I falter. It's wearing a Rosehill Academy dress, torn to shreds, but the shade of green is unmistakable. It ambles in our direction, and my heart stops, it's one of the Littlies, a child, no more than twelve or so.

  Alex watches me with compassion clear on his face, as he shifts, I know he's preparing to take her out himself—I can't let him. It has to be me. She was one of mine, and she didn't deserve this. She shouldn't be shuffling around like some wounded feral creature waiting to stumble upon its prey. I let loose my arrow and breathe a sigh of relief when it hits its mark. An arrow to the eye socket wasn't ideal, but in this situation, quick and painless was the best I could do.

  I wipe angrily at the tear that rolls down my cheek as Donovan places a hand on my shoulder. This isn't the place for soothing words. Here, silence dominates. How could the government do this? How could they destroy the world like this? The radio and TV stations hadn't been active for long after the outbreak, maybe a day or two with the warning system on loop telling us to stay indoors. It was long enough to let the country know that this virus had been deliberate, leaked documents proved it. The water supplies had been contaminated. It was to tackle population control, experts surmised, to take out the lower classes and those who were a drain on the economy. It would alleviate the refugee crisis, the government argued. It was supposed to be controlled, affecting only targeted areas and people, only it mutated. But it spread like wildfire. The virus didn't differentiate between rich or poor, it just took, killing over half the population in just six weeks. Our own country had done this. Every country had done this. Nowhere was safe. They got what they wanted, the human population had rapidly declined, only now there were the zombies to contend with.

  Chapter Seven

  Alex

  Mia is lost in her thoughts as we move around the bend in the road. Her face flips through a range of emotions as though she is having a full-blown conversation in her head―she probably is. She's been alone for so long. Whatever’s waiting for us can’t be good.

  Donovan moves ahead of us as we carry on down the lane. In the distance, we spot something blocking the narrow road. It looks like the shell of a bus or coach, with another one just in front, but they’ve been flipped onto their sides, windows smashed, with vegetation and moss covering the rusty metal. I can see the Rosehill crest on the back, paint peeling and flaking away in chunks. So, this is why she was alone. Donovan signals to another wreck in the bushes down an embankment, it is a minibus. I look at Mia, and she flinches before turning and pointing to a second minibus, this one had reversed into a wall and was hidden in the forest. She doesn't say anything, but I know it must have been the one she was on―it was the closest to the school and the furthest away from the others. We had walked past it, neither Donovan nor I noticing it until she had pointed it out.

  We don't move any closer, there are a few zombies milling around by the crashed coach, and it's too dangerous to investigate. It isn't hard to see the carnage, bodies with plants growing up from inside, the bones covered in lichen and the destruction strewn across the countryside. It was blocking the one clear path from the school, blocking our escape from here―it’s no wonder Mia never left, she’d have to go through the woods, and that was a huge risk.

  I signal to Donovan and Mia that we should head back, and slowly, we retreat. More zombies come into focus, shuffling around, their heads tilting ever so slightly as they catch a whiff of us on the breeze. I signal again, we need to move faster. Mia stumbles in a pothole as she walks backwards carefully, damn country lanes and damn government for not spending road tax where it should be spent. Three of the zombies closest to us hear her, and they look up. Their large milky eyes struggle to focus as they tilt their heads and try to sniff us out. The one closest to us is dressed in army camo, he's the larger of the three, and his slow shuffle begins to pick up speed, and soon, he is jogging in our direction. The other two follow his lead, and they too begin to move faster. At this point, we've turned and are now running back to the school. It is almost impossible to run quietly, our footfalls slamming on the ground, our breathing heavy, and it starts to draw them in. More low moaning can be heard around us in the hedges, in the fields, and in the Woodlands. We reach the school gates with a shout, Dai and Lee had already spotted us and opened the main gate, ready. Using more of the bows they had found in the sports shed with the sharpened arrow tips Mia left them this morning, they begin firing at the monsters following us. Their aim is shocking, unused to using bows, but at least it slows the rotting flesh bags down. We slam the gate closed behind us and quickly bolt it shut. I shout up to Lee, who lets me know that the three who were hot on our tails are no longer an issue. They climb down, and together, we all head back inside to the dining hall.

  “So what did you find? What did she do?” Karen spits as she dishes up squirrel stew.

  Donovan shakes his head. "Fuck sake Karen, back off, will you? It was a shit show. Dead bodies, dead children, and fucking monsters. You can't keep hating the girl for surviving."

  “That's not what I meant,” she growls. “But I don't trust her.”

  “You don't have to, but you do have to stop being a dick.” With that, Donovan throws his bow down and storms off upstairs.

  I've been with Don for a while now, but
I didn't know much about him, I only knew that sometimes he needed space and time to process what we had just seen. I was willing to bet he’d lost someone, but then again, we all had. Children always hurt the most, and seeing them was a reminder of how fucked up this world had become.

  “Look, let's discuss it later, but for now, eat the food, and I will go check in with Basecamp.” I’m trying to remain diplomatic and keep everyone calm, but I know tensions are running high. It isn't Mia's fault what happened to the others, and Karen needed to realise that.

  “Is there still no response?” Mia asks, and everyone turns to look at me.

  “What does she mean no response?” Ethan asks, as he slams his spoon down on the table.

  At the same time, Karen hisses, “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  “You haven’t heard from base since yesterday? And you didn’t think to tell us?” Dai is looking at me now with anger clearly etched across his face. So much for holding everyone together. Mia mouths an apology at me from her spot at the table, but she wasn’t to know I was keeping this from them.

  I straighten my shoulders. “I am in charge here, and you didn’t need to know yet.”

  “My daughter is back there!” Dai roars, getting to his feet.

  “And what can you do? What can you do right in this moment?”

  He hesitates, knowing the same thing I know. That he couldn’t do anything, not really.

  “I can go back…” he mumbles, as he falls back into his seat, the worst thoughts imaginable crowding his head, and I know because they show clearly on his face.