Road Trip: A Tale of Zombies, Friendship, and Romance

Chapter 1

Nami was sitting in the back of a police car. Staring out the window at the Boston streets she had become horridly accustomed to these past 16 years, she was only vaguely half-listening to the policewoman driving her to the station. There was an icy chill through the car, and it wasn't just because the air conditioner was on too high.

"It's not just you who has to deal with this," the officer said after a few seconds of silence. "I have to put up with it too. Okay? It's my reputation on the line. I don't want to be the cop with the convict daughter."

"I get it, Mom."

"Hey Belle, how's your daughter? Did she light any more fires recently? How many bikes has she stolen now, a dozen?"

"I've never committed arson and I've only stolen one bike. It's not that big a deal."

Bellemere sucked in a breath, biting her tongue to keep the frustration down. She exhaled sharply through her nose, "It IS a big deal, Nami! This is the stuff that can drastically affect your future! You're young, you're smart! You can do anything you want! You are a bright! Clever! Intelligent-" she punctuated each word by slapping the steering wheel with her hand "-Young woman and it just... it breaks my heart to see you like this!"

Nami had completely zoned her mother out at this point. When Bellemere got into the "hearbreaking" part of her spiel, it was time to stop listening and find a way to distract yourself. They were stopped at a red light at an intersection when Bellemere turned around in her seat. "Nami! Are you even listening to me?!"

She snapped back into reality with a start, "Yeah! Yeah I'm listening, sheesh!"

Bellemere didn't look convinced. "Then what was the last thing I just said?"

There was a horrible second of awkward silence that felt like an eternity, until Nami saw her salvation. "The light's green, Mom," she said, hoping it would be a sufficient distraction from her mother's grilling tactics.

It was not. The second Bellemere turned around and resumed driving, she repeated, "What was the last thing I said?"

Nami was about to make a wild guess when she was saved once more. But this time it was thanks to the sound of gunshots in the distance. Nami's elation at being spared more of her mom's lecture quickly deflated when her conscience kicked back in and reminded her that- because they did not live in the deep south- gunshots in the distance were a sign of trouble.

Bellemere's head quickly turned in the direction the shots came from and Nami had to shout, "MOM!" in order to get her head to focus back on the road to avoid the man who had run in front of her car. Bellemere slammed on the brakes, barely hitting him, but still knocking him flat on his ass. Before she could get out to make sure he was okay, he was already on his feet, running away from the gunshots they heard earlier.

He was followed by several more people, fleeing in a panic, shoving each other out of the way. Some of them, Nami could see, were bleeding from awful-looking wounds, limping and collapsing to the ground.

They were stopped in the middle of the intersection, and the people rushing by made driving forward almost impossible. Bellemere opened the door and said as sternly as possible, "Stay. Here."

This would end up being a mistake. Spoilers.

Bellemere ran for one of the fleeing citizens, grabbing him by the shoulders and standing in front of him to keep him from running. "Sir, sir, I need you to calm down. I'm a police officer, tell me what's going on. Are you injured?"

"Sh-she bit me!" he managed to stammer out in ragged breaths. He held his forearm up, showing a distinct human bite mark. A literal chunk of skin had been bitten off and there appeared to be some kind of rash spreading from the wound itself. "That crazy-... They were all biting everyone over there!"

"Who was biting who? Sir, do you need me to call-" and that's as far as she got when she heard the squealing tires behind her.

There are those awful moments in life that are made doubly worse by the fact that time seems to slow down. In those moments, you really do take in all the worst details of the incident. Bellemere whirled around and managed to take note of everything in the few seconds she had. A car screaming down the street toward the intersection. Its hood and windshield already covered in blood and a human body. The brakes screaming as the driver tried in vain to stop. The crunch of metal as it t-boned her police car.

The police car her daughter was currently occupying.

Nami, thankfully, didn't have the same sense of looming despair in slow motion. For her, it mostly went screaming, squealing brakes, crunch, nothing.

Oh yeah and then a sudden, violent shove back into the world of the conscious. Nami awoke with blood in her eye, pain in her forehead and limbs, and a vague disorientation that can come from nearly being killed in a car wreck. The sounds of gunshots and people screaming helped jar her awake, as well as someone's arm reaching out for her and grabbing her shoulder.

"Nami! Nami, oh thank God you're awake!" The voice belonged to her mother and as Nami blinked the haziness away and regained her vision, she could see Bellemere wasn't looking too good herself. There was blood on the front of her uniform and her gun was drawn. A hand seemed to emerge from her back, reaching around to grab her shoulder and Bellemere was quick to elbow its owner in the side. "Get OFF!"

Her attacker fell backwards onto the ground and Bellemere didn't even hesitate to point her gun at his head and pull the trigger. "Holy shit, Mom!" Nami screamed. Bellemere stared at her daughter in confusion and shook her head.

"Oh, right! No it's okay sweetie, he wasn't alive anymore. Can you move? We need to get out of here now."

"What do you mean he wasn't alive?" Nami asked while reaching for Bellemere's outstretched hand. When she climbed out of the wreckage, she turned around to survey the damage. The left side of the police car had been smashed in, and the front of the car that hit her was a crumpled mess. Its driver was through the windshield, cut to hell and back on broken glass. But he was still moving. Making weak lunges toward Nami as though he didn't know he was still held back by his seatbelt.

Looking around, she could see a group of three people hunched over a body, ripping off chunks of flesh and devouring them. A handful of people, bleeding from gaping wounds, and stumbling mindlessly on weak legs. Blood splattered on the streets and sidewalks, people running in every direction in a desperate panic.

"Oh my God..." was all Nami could mutter. "They're zombies. They're... They're actually zombies."

"I know," came Bellemere's oddly calm response. "I've been waiting for you to wake up so we could haul ass out of here. We've gotta get home and get Nojiko. Find somewhere safe to hole up. Wait for help or... more realistically, try to establish our own survivor group."

Holding the wound in her forehead, Nami stumbled forward, trying to grasp the concept of walking dead. "How... How long was I out?"

Bellemere lit a cigarette and placed it between her lips. "Oh... About ten minutes?"

"Ten min- IT GOT THIS BAD IN TEN MINUTES?!"

Her mother just shrugged. "Yeah I dunno what to tell you, honey. Things really escalated." She grabbed Nami's wrist and pulled her away from the car, gun in one hand, leading her towards their house, which was several blocks away. It was going to be a long walk.

And so, in essence, that was the start of the end of the world.

Okay, not the entire world, don't worry. Some of it's still there. It wouldn't be much fun if everyone was dead, you know?

You've probably all heard the story in some way or another. The basic rundown is, someone got sick, died, came back with a taste for human flesh. Next thing you know, there's panic in a crowded hospital, and then that panic spread to the streets, into the cities, across the nation, and then across the world. Patient Zero sprang violently into our world five years ago, on what most refer to as "Zombie Day". Things have mostly calmed down now. Those who have survived have migrated past the first desperate years of clinging to supplies and sacrificing morals just to survive. None of this is really too important, though. No one really cares HOW a zombie virus came about, that's why media tends to skip over it.

So what happened to Nami? And her mother? Are they okay? Did they get devoured between then and now? Is Nami some kind of decoy protagonist? Where you just start to get attached to the character in the intro, and then in a surprise twist she's dramatically killed off?

No.

That would be dumb.

She's fine. But five years is a long time, so let's catch up.

After Zombie Day, Bellemere utilized her natural leadership skills, endless charisma, and survival abilities to become the head of a ragtag group of colorful survivors from all walks of life. Nami and her sister Nojiko accompanied their mother and this group on all sorts of heartwarming and/or tragic adventures. They learned how to survive. They made difficult decisions. Not all of them would last, of course. But it seemed whenever some of them would die to the zombie hordes or a gunfight with another group, it wouldn't be long before new strangers would arrive to join them. It was like some kind of cosmic hand was manipulating events to keep the total group number at a reasonable number so that interpersonal dynamics would always be interesting.

After a few years, Bellemere would find herself reestablishing a community just outside of the city. She led her people to reclaim a small suburb from the undead and establish walls and fences to keep out the herds. It was safe, it was civil, they had a good patrol system to check the walls for any damages. On the zombie prevention front, they were doing pretty well for themselves.

On the people front, they'd get travelers every so often. Caravans of people on horseback or the occasional car. Some would stay, some would trade supplies and be on their way. In a way, it was kind of like going back to the days of the old west, but with less desert and cowboy hats and more corpses. And yes, of course there were the occasional shootouts or battles between Bellemere's town and some other pocket of survivors looking to ransack their town. It was always an annoyance when that happened, Bellemere was more than willing to negotiate, but sometimes the only trade that could be made was bullet for bullet, being delivered at high speeds directly into someone's eyeball.

So, despite everything that's happened, Nami had gone from a normal troublemaking life to a hell on earth, and ended up back in relative peace with her family. She had obviously changed, though. She learned how to use a gun, how to navigate silently. How to listen. All the most basic survival skills necessary for the world beyond the walls. Often she would go on raids or small trading expeditions. But she'd never stray too far from the town. Nami did make it a habit to collect maps. Maps of the country she'd get from travelers, which she would study until she had memorized the routes traced into them. She would often daydream about finding the one thing that would push her to leave the town, see what the rest of the world has to offer. But nothing significant ever came her way.

Which catches us up all the way to the present. Where a stranger comes to town.