Meghan (no last name) is cleaning a knife through the interview. Her eyes never meet my own but the silvery metallic color is unsettling. Though she only ever pulls out the one knife I can see several outlines. She wears a black tank top and black pants tucked into knee high boots. Besides the knife she carried an old style battle ax.
You were how old when Zeds first showed up?
Too young. I was eight. At eight years old I watched my world crash around me. How screwed up is that. I watch those kids play in the streets and I think to myself I will never have what they are going to get.
And that would be?
Childhood. I guess even before the war I never truly got it. My dad was military I grew up in boarding schools across the world. Imagine by the time you were eight having lived in ten homes across three continents.
I was in New York when it happened. The Great Panic. I survived there until war with the Zeds was declared.
Zeds?
Ya. A buddy that stayed with me was from France. Z is pronounced like Zed. that's what we called them.
You wanna know what survival was like for me right?
Correct. Everything.
Cool. (The barrier lowers and for just a second I see the young nineteen year old girl behind the warrior mask.) No one has ever just asked for the story.
My story starts with my father. Like I said he was military. I came home from the fancy private schools they had me in. Hastings Academy. I hated that place. It was awful. The shoes were uncomfortable and the uniform was scratchy. I ran home to get out of the clothes and I found my parents fighting. Something about a plague. I had learned about the black plague a few weeks before. Funny. I can remember what I learned but a cant remember the name of the teacher. Life before the war comes in flashes. It has been to long since I have been 'normal'
Sorry. Dad won. He always did. He took this seriously when everyone else was sitting at home listening to the news about the outbreak in China saying 'that can't happen to us. Not here.'
What preparations did you make?
Took out our entire life savings. All of it in one go. Because my dad was my dad we lived outside city limits already. No neighbors that close. We started by cutting down all the trees around the house for a long time flattening everything else. Some of my dad's buddies came to help. Nothing was allowed with a hundred feet of the house that could block the view. By this time we had 12 people living at our house. To other kids. Both boys. One a couple years younger the other one year older. We brought in backhoes and dug a trench around the house. Really deep and about twenty feet across. We boarded up the basement windows and reinforced it with steel bars.
We went on day long shopping trips where we would buy everything. This was still while there was things in stores to buy. Before everyone really panicked. We organized and piled everything into the basement. Then we spent house working on the house. Fortifying it. For weeks it was all like 'go-go-go' by the time our basement was full to the brim others had caught on. That was the last time we went into the city. Mom and I were loading up an entire car full, like the only free space was the driver seat and the little place I was wedged in. you couldn't see out of any of the windows. I remember thinking this was it. We could last forever. A guy held a knife at mom and demanded she give her the keys. Maybe the guy couldn't see me all wedged in. he didn't know mom had more than groceries in the car. Mom took out a handgun and cool as can be told him to back away. Told him to turn around and not come back.
He ran. Boy did he run. I remember thinking mom was so tough. She could handle everything. Then we went home.
Things were crazy at home. Nine adults. Three couple and three more of dad's buddies and the three kids. And like fifteen dogs.
Dogs?
That was the other thing we did. We went to the animal shelters and cleared them out of dogs. Well the big tough mean ones and a couple puppies. Dad had heard the could detect Zeds. I got one. (she motions to the dog asleep at her feet.) this one here is her son from her last littler of puppies.
She was a Siberian Husky. Black with a pretty silver undercoat.
Mom was upset she said the dog would eat my alive. She laughs. Ol' Keshia did the opposite. She kept me from being eaten several times. She had these amazing eyes. Like icy blue fire. She was a good girl.
The first wave hit about a month after we stopped going in to the city. Who knows how long it had been since New York fell. For all we know the first of the cases could have been there the last time we went.
At first the kids went into the basement when the moaning started. We would be down there for days sometimes. That first summer was the easiest. That was before the swarms truly hit. See when everything started way over half the people left New York. Went to family in other areas, went to Canada or just disappeared. Then with the suicides that left New York almost abandoned compared to what it was. The next summer was harder.
Then when I was ten and my dad taught me how to shoot. Then he taught me how to use a blade. Especially after the first death.
I was told it was one of the children.
It was. His name was Vance. I remember the teasing. A silly name like Vance. We told him that we weren't supposed to be near the windows. He said it was fine. The Zeds weren't getting close, not with that trench. But it was full. One managed to climb and got him. Broke his arm as he forced it through the bars. Sunk his teeth it. Had half the arm gone before our screams brought an adult. It was his mother. She sat there for a moment. Her eyes kinda glazed then she shot the zombie. We burnt his body on the roof. In a bath tub. Not sure how we got it up there in the first place. But we couldn't just dump him into the trench. A month later a few of the adults went out to take care of the frozen remains. His mom and dad never came back.
They died?
She did. I ran into him a couple years later. He was a quisling in rehab. Broke after his family died. He took that darkness to far into himself. Decided it was easier to embrace the darkness than overcome it.
He never got better.
We lived in harmony, or as close as it got, until the summer I turned 13. five years after we had locked ourselves in the house. Five years later and five already gone.
Five?
The family of three. Then one wife. And one of the unmarried men. She…. We found her in the trench with a bullet through her head. She couldn't take it. I found her note. Dad showed her husband She had seen their son, who had been in the military, in the swarm. Killed him personally.
The other man was hurt on a raiding party. Killed by dogs. Those wild ones that thrive in the winter.
She pauses. Puts the knife on the table and looks out the window her eyes flashing.
You want to know what killed the tranquility? It was me. I went out on a raiding party. she pulls the ties of the wide leather choker and reveals a set of human teeth marks.
I was out on a raiding party. He ran faster than I thought he would. My plan was to kill him then myself. I didn't want to join the swarm. One hand on my neck I shot him in the head.
But you didn't' turn it on yourself.What stopped you? (the irrational fear is leaving my voice at the completely healed mark.)
He bled red. I didn't know anything about Quislings yet. That came later. With Jason. But win he bled red I decided if I started feeling sick I'd end it. But till then I was to young to die.
I went to New York. I couldn't go home. I had been seen being bitten. They'd kill me out of mercy before I got close. It was lucky I stumbled across Jason. He was two years older and spotted me as I stumbled through new York crying for help. See Quislings they have bacteria in their bites. I was delirious for days. Luckily Jason saw fit to lock my in a room not kill me outright. We made a fortress. A small two story apartment we knocked the stairs out. One person always stayed behind. To let the other in with a rope ladder. it nearly killed me when he went out alone to kill and get food. For five years we lived and fought. We killed so many zeds. We are still together today.
We survived for the last five years till the army got there together. He's the man in the statue. The one that sits as you enter New York.
( I picture the beautiful memorial. The New York Survivors. In metal sit's a likeness of the woman in front of me her arm carelessly flung around the husky at her side as she sits in the grass. A gun across her lap her eyes downcast and filled with tears. A man stands over her a gun held loosely in his hands.)
The funny thing they don't tell people about me is that wasn't how we stood. I was in the middle of a swarm killing and hacking my way through when they arrived. They thought I was a feral. You know those kids that grew up killin' and killin' till they had nothing left. I must admit I made a strange sight. Covered in brownish blood and a handkerchief wrapped around my mouth and nose. It wasn't till I screamed for them not to shoot that that guy dropped his gun in surprise. Guess it wasn't usual for them to find a lone girl like me non-feral and alone. Jason was keeping' watch in the fortress. But the statue is gorgeous.
What about the people in the house?
Mom died. She got a cold one winter and after everything else she couldn't handle it. Dad was in charge he lived for his men. Him and five others were still locked tight in the house when me Jason and the other soldiers knocked at the door. Dad helps lead the Spring hunting now. We still keep in contact.
Now if you excuse me I have a plane to catch to the hunting grounds. Spring is hunting season.
She leaves the room leaving the door open. As she walks down the corridor a man melts out of the shadows and puts a hand around her waist.
"Let's go hunt us some Zed's babe."
"My favorite kind of hunting. Till the last one is dead."
At the time of our interview Meghan is 19.