AUTHOR'S NOTE: The events in this story are heavily inspired by The Walking Dead. I have not taken characters from the original story, or used the same Infection Spread/Plot Points. The walkers however are similar. This story is also rated a hard M, even if it doesn't start out graphic it will get to that point.
The back of my head burned where the roots pulled at my scalp, the hand entangled in it dirty and blood-stained. The other pair of hands like vices wrapped around my wrists. A second person, a woman, leered forward her knife tipsily tracing the outline of my jaws.
Her eyes were light, but glinting with darkness. Behind her the colony of trees swayed in the breeze.. "Not a mark on her," she said, her tongue teasing between her teeth. The brothers behind her wore battle wounds across their features like badges of pride, scarred arms bracing Alex between them as he struggled. "He's been taking good care of her," said the woman, undeterred.
I knew what was coming. I prepared myself as best as I could – shaking my body, screaming obscenities as I did what I could to hurl my weight against the concrete force at my back.
"There isn't much to her Ally, she's all bones," said the man who was holding my wrists. His grip was tight, bruising the skin and bone, more than that my recently closed wound ached terribly.
"But look how perfect that face is," Ally purred again. "It's not good to have such a pretty face. I am gonna do you a favor, Eve. Girl to girl. Does your boyfriend want to watch?"
The man behind her laughed, curt and hard.
"Don't you fucking touch her!" Alex yelled. He shook his head to the side, avoiding the slip of the gag and barreling into one of the men while the other grabbed at the bind of his wrists. The shorter man lurched to the side with the abrasive impact of Alex's shoulders. The other sucker-punched Alex along the back of his head, sending him hard to the ground. The brother's converged like hyenas, kicking their hunting boots into his abdomen, blackening the skin on his chest and face. His name was on my lips, my voice toneless with hysteria. It died in the middle, transfigured by pain as the knife cut into my face.
"What, are you stupid?" were the first words Alex had ever said to me, hissed like a threat between his lips. His hand had wrapped around the nose of my gun, sharply pivoting it downward and away from the singleton walking dead, wandering dumbly across the track. I thought he was insane when he walked directly towards it, lifting the dagger as he went. He had crashed it into the rotting man's skull with a meaty shlicking sound, the body falling like warm compost against the Earth. He turned to examine me, and my stupidity, a loud hunting rifle I had never fired. And I was, stupid, that is.
I didn't know then. I didn't know much of anything.
Alex had dark eyes, when he was angry, which was always. In the rare opportunity he wasn't then they were green and vibrant. He was tall and muscular, and perpetually glowering. How he had snuck up on me was a mystery to me, but not to him. I was alive by some mishap of chance.
I'd been lucky. As lucky as you could be when the world went to shit. I'd had a group take me in. I hadn't had to hunt, I was easily slopped in with the other skinny housewives and their children. We'd had a farm, off the beaten path with chickens and pigs. It stood awhile, considering the state of things. Four weeks after the Rising, the farm was overrun. I'd hid in a cabinet, listening to the screams of the living and the terrible slurping sounds of the dead. I was there for two days before the last of them cleared, and shaking and weak I faced the wreckage.
I'd run into the woods with my rifle. Three days later, Alex met me.
''What were you going to do after you fired the gun?" I could barely make sense of the words Alex said. The past week had been the longest of my life. I had gone from surrounded by a small team of people to completely and wildly alone. The rustle of wild-life in the bush wasn't just a loping squirrel, it was a starving corpse. I'd spent my time hiding, stunned by how awful the world was outside the farm, anxious about the proximity of a violent death.
To see another person was both wonderful and terrifying.
Alex was looking for an answer.
"I don't know," is what I said. I didn't know. I hadn't thought past the terrible fall my stomach had taken, the clumsy shock of coming upon a decaying face. The empty eyes had seen me and driven forward, rotting hands reaching forward to rip me to shreds. You died slowly too, I had heard it. The gun had been my first response, lifting the nozzle with shaking hands to throw a bullet at the first real threat I saw.
"How are you alive?" Alex had said it like it had been my fault. Like he was angry to come across my path at all. I hadn't had an answer for that either, but rather than say as much I'd said nothing. I had grown up around angry people. If you gave them nothing they still found something to be mad about.
I don't think we said anymore than that. We never communicated that we were banding together then, but I followed him from that forest and he never said a word about it. I didn't learn his name until we were hidden in the hunting cabin, ducked away from the windows. There I learned he was Alex, and he learned I was Eve.
He had moved a couch to block the door and I lamely did my best to help.
After that, we didn't talk.
I wondered if it was safe to be there, safe to be anywhere really. Alex hadn't gone near me, though. He stayed at his side of the cabin, occasionally shooting suspicious looks in my direction. I don't think either of us slept that first night. I do know we said nothing more than our names. He avoided saying mine completely for awhile.
I wasn't a survivalist before the end of the world. But I knew people, I always knew people and I knew what Alex was doing. It didn't take the avoidance of my name, or the heaping of insults for me to understand that he was putting up a wall between us. It was in the way he carried himself, a no-nonsense gait. It was his tone itself, lashing and angry when all he was snapping was an important observation, a landmark to keep in sight. His hurt was all over him, and I wondered what he had seen. I didn't ask though, I didn't ask him anything. It wasn't because I was quiet or ever kept my mouth shut. I was simply stunned. I imagine there were a lot like me, in the beginning but you can get used to most things.
I never got used to Them.
But I did get used to the feeling. The feeling of being stuck in the middle of a play with no lines, the feeling of being on a sinking ship with not an island in sight. As I got used to it I seemed to come back in, and in that I got used to Alex.
Alex must have called me stupid a thousand times the first week. There were a million different ways to say it.
"Blind corner," he'd snap when we entered a building, grabbing my shoulder to pivot me towards a space I had overlooked. "And, you're dead," he'd say whenever he returned to our hovel of the earth, and I hadn't noticed him until the last possible second.
Sometimes when I would mess up he'd be so angry he couldn't find the words. I'd fumble with the can opener and he'd start opening his mouth and shut it, wondering why he was wasting his time as he stole it away from me to do himself. He'd rip sticks out of my hand when I failed to mimic the precise motion of his hands after three times of watching.
My anger was building, like boiling water slowly coming to a roll. I tried to be rational, I tried to get it.
I understood he was angry. I also saw that he was teaching me, in his own strange way. But there was only so much shock to cushion the irritation.
I had been traveling with Alex for fourteen days when the car alarm went off, a coincidence of bad timing and some unfortunate rustle. We had been scouting a residential neighborhood for food, with our packs nearly empty and out heads aching from hunger.
Alex broke the lock off the back door of the house, raising his gun in case out entry garnered attention. His rifle had a silencer on it, a packed segment of steel wool and grease. When nothing came running, he switched the gun for the dagger. Behind him I kept my own gun angled for any sign of attack.
The house we entered had a laundry room at the immediate right. I had reached to shut the door as we passed it, as Alex had told me a hundred times before. When I pulled on the knob the ironing board at the back of the door had dropped loose, falling to the floor with a thunderous clatter.
Alex shifted for a fraction of a second before the crash at the backdoor, a flailing woman-like limb breaking the carefully curtained glass of the small window with a shatter. There was an issuance of moaning on the steps, the approach of deteriorating feet as they moved for the front windows, a tremendous chorus of battering fists on the shivering glass. "Come on!" Alex's feet squeaked on the linoleum, a large black imprint of a boot in someone's decimating kitchen.
I followed him to the first door he approached, awkwardly splayed in the middle of the kitchen. His foot went through the rotted landing as I jerked the door closed behind us, shutting out the light. "If you slam another fucking thing I'm going to slam your head through the wall," he growled. I could feel his glare in the dark. I felt for my flashlight, belatedly finding the front of it in my pocket and twisting it to angle at Alex's foot, swallowed by the rotting wood. He jerked upwards and it stuck fast, an emission of pain like a burst of steam from his mouth.
I cupped his leg above the interruption of the floor and the bleeding juncture, his hands steadied on the railing. I pulled up and he jerked backwards, leaving behind a red splinters and a muffled cry of pain.
The glass shattered in the living room, raining onto the floor as hurtling bodies disturbed the segments that remained. In the movies glass falls all at once. In actuality it was one piercing shriek after the other.
I turned to flip the little lock on the basement door, Alex limping down the stairs following the bobbing beam of his light. I looked at the door a moment, seeing it for what it was. Weak oak with a switch-tab lock, keeping at bay a legion of undead.
It was with terrible panic I moved down the wooden stairs, avoiding the crater in the top step left by Alex's foot.
The basement was mostly storage, an unfinished concrete hole in the ground. There was a window, blurred with dust and bleary post-rain. Alex collapsed against the back wall, clutching his gun and pointing it at the angle of the stairs. He was glaring openly at me, in the thin light of the monochromatic window.
"I did what you told me," I said, finally.
"Did I tell you to get us killed?"
"I shut the door," I issued, my voice hinging on irritation.
"You slammed the door!"
"Something fell!" I snapped back.
"You're useless."
"You're mean," I responded hotly.
"At least I know I'm mean." His voice crawled. "You don't seem to know you're useless."
"I don't care what you think of me," I told him, turning my back on him to move across the large expansive basement. I kicked up dust as I moved, clouding my sinuses but refusing to sneeze. Alex didn't dare call after me and alert attention. It was his injured leg that kept him from physically turning me back to finish the fight. He was in an awful mood and never would have left things alone like that if he was feeling well.
It was with this information I began popping open boxes, scowling. I eventually found something similar to what I was looking for, returning with a small yellowing First Aid Kit. When I opened it there was nothing but twine inside and rubbing alcohol, no bandages. A single Mickey Mouse band-aid had been stuck to the plastic container itself. I got back up, settling on the least dusty sheet I could find. It had been draped over a colony of old chairs, carefully guarding a cracking television set.
Above us, I could hear feet mulling about the living room. There was a crash as something fell, a lumbering cry cutting through the cracks in the basement door to echo around the room. I pretended not to hear it as I doused Alex's wound with the alcohol, numb to his grieved inhale as I ripped the sheet, swabbing then wrapping the wound.
"Tighter," he told me. "Tighter!" he snapped when I still hadn't done it like he would. I pulled tighter, glaring at him as I finished wrapping the wound.
"If it goes numb, that's on you," I told him.
"Except, it's your fault that we're down here," he argued. I imagined he was probably glad to be fighting me, I hadn't been much more than a sounding board in our weeks together. That alone wasn't enough to get me to turn off though, it never had been before this.
"I didn't do anything wrong," I refuted. There was a crash as something hit the door at the top of the stairs. Alex moved to his feet, the weight on his right ankle turning his face gray. "It can't hear us," I told him. "There's no way."
"Shut up." He was looking towards the door, for the logic of what was happening versus my thoughts on them. There was another muffled bang.
"It's just one of them," I said again, not keen on moving. I could still hear the car alarm echoing in the distance, cycling in and out. The streets would be crawling and it was still light out.
"Winds flexing the door. Fuck." He shook his head. "It fucking figures." The creature banged up against the door with a dreadful moan and larger bang, it was definitely more than one of them now, brought to the door by the vibration of the wind through the house.
He turned to examine the window. There was nothing to push open the glass with. It would have to be unscrewed, or broken.
I moved to grab one of the chairs I had seen hiding beneath the sheet. I banged it against the ground to splinter the wood enough to rip off the leg. Alex took the stake from me without comment, pegging it against the glass until it spiraled. He tapped the spirals until they broke, reaching to push the triangles out of the way.
"Are you going to fit?" I said.
The window wasn't very big. I wasn't sure Alex's shoulders could make it all the way through, especially at his chest. Alex didn't give any validity to my claims, or refute them either, electing to simply ignore me as he limped to the nearest table to pull free the sheet covering it. Underneath the sheet was a variety of fish tank equipment, somehow still dirty and dank. Alex folded the sheet, placing it over the broken strips of glass.
"You're not going to fit," I realized as I examined the window. I was going to just barely fit.
"Nope," Alex said flatly. "Go around, see how many there are left in the house and what you can do. If you don't know, come back."
"I don't know," I said.
"What don't you know?" There was another loud bang at the top of the stairs. "Don't you want to get your feet a little wet before you get ripped to pieces?"
I glared at him. "Prove me wrong." He shrugged.
I moved over to the window, saying nothing as Alex knelt to boost me. I stepped onto his fists and pulled myself through the broken window, the damp grass leaving water spots on my knees.
"Here." Alex pushed his dagger through the window. I had never used it before, and wasn't feeling very confident about it. I bent to accept it from Alex, straightening to examine the yard I stood in.
The sky was still grayish with rain, the sun slinking lower and lower in the sky. I was in a small fenced yard, unable to see much more than the upper windows and rooftops of the neighbor's yard. There was a small bush, and several puddles but nothing that could help us. I didn't say goodbye to Alex as I moved around the side of the house, tracing the blue paneling with my fingers.
The fence ended in a sharp curve. If I were Alex, I could see over it. Instead, I peered through the cracks between the bolt-lock and the wood. The street lay open and exposed, eerily dead. It always struck me, how quiet the world was without cars.
It still wasn't silent though. The street was empty, from where I could see, but I could hear moaning inside the house. I thought about the zombie at the back door. It had sounded like an entire army had entered through the window.
The car alarm was still bursting for air down the block. It could have easily lured the zombies back out again but I knew it hadn't. The sound had become background noise. The living dead were enumerated with the newest loudest bang.
I unlatched the gate, my heart picking up in my chest. My bladder was squeezing tight, as if making itself smaller. I hunched down, hoping to make myself less noticeable.
The front porch was narrow, but tall. I uncurled my spine to peer beneath the rails. I could see where the window had come down, several jagged pieces of glass still clinging to the frame. Inside the house I could see the reanimated corpses, pacing.
Four of them were now banging against the oak door, picking up their lumbering fists just to hurl them forward again with a series of meaty thwacks. It shook hard in its frame with the force of the blows. There was a fifth in the living room, attempting to pull itself along the carpet. For whatever reason, its legs seemed to have betrayed it and it wasn't moving.
I couldn't take on four zombies. I wasn't to waste the ammo in the gun unless they knocked down the door. I thought about what it would be like to just walk away, but I never seriously considered it. Alex was mean and abrasive, but he was also company. It was an awful thing to be alone out here, and awful worse to be left to die alone.
I couldn't kill them. I would have to distract them. I braced myself as a breeze flitted through the trees, forcing the leaves into a shudder. They seemed to whisper above me, congregating as I thought and the basement door shook in its frame.
There was a soft crack. The door would be coming down soon. I licked the dryness from my lips, the cold wind on the wet spot waking me up.
I looked to the street. Several cars had been parked in relative normalcy, just to never be driven again. The streets were a mess to navigate, the keys impossible to match to a car that still had any juice left in it. But I didn't need the car, not the whole thing.
I moved around the wrap around porch, darting into the yard of the adjoining house. I moved along the back, winding around a paisley dog-house with an overturned dog dish and twisted chain. I loped to the next yard, underneath a shattered window and through a patch of dead itchy grass that licked across my heels as I moved. My heart was racing all the while, a caged animal waiting for the doors to open and the necessity to bolt. Four houses down, I stopped. It seemed like enough space from our house to attract the walkers, and close enough that I could get back, hopefully alive.
I held my breath as I approached the car, pulling at the back door. It was locked fast, flexing with a soft click under my sweaty palm. I knew the car alarm would sound if I tried the front door, and prepared myself for the bursting sound as best as I could.
The alarm didn't go off, the passenger door opening under my hand. I let out a shaky breath, extending my hand for the horn. I closed my eyes, for a moment aware of the pulse in my body, the blood hammering in my heart. I leaned on the horn and with an almighty squeal of a boom it let out. I hit it four times in rapid succession, then raced across the lawn back behind the house.
I heard them now, coming from all sides. Their labored gasps and the scratchy sounds of a dragged limb. It was more than ten, definitely. I loped over the fence this time, not daring to dart around. I hadn't been very good at climbing fences before and now was no exception. I fell over into the bordering yard hard, tasting dirt and blood as my limbs tangled beneath me. I got back to my feet, not allowing time to assess the damage. A grayish leg jutted onto the road, a raspy smoker groan following. I shrugged behind the dog house, clutching to the moist wood chips for purchase, the handle of the dagger clutched tightly in my palm. The creature lumbered forward, a conglomeration of barely stuck limbs pasted together with strings of tendons. The arm dragged along the ground, connected by one slowly ripping stretch of muscle. The man lurched past, his arm following like a lazy pet.
I couldn't climb the fence again. I stepped into the road, behind the back of the zombie, moving on the tips of my toes into the front yard of the house I had left Alex in. My breath was a short burst in my nose as I peered over the edge of the porch.
The walkers had gone, the back door was no longer breathing in its frame.
I vaulted myself over onto the deck., moving over the broken glass and to the basement door. As I reached for the knob, a long cold hand wrapped around my ankle with a gnarly groan, yanking me hard to the ground.
I let out an involuntary scream, flicking my leg to kick off the woman. Her hair was short and coming off her head with large sticky sections of skin, her eyes gray and full of cataracts. Her arm yanked, her mouth opening to reveal teeth like serrated stones.
I jerked forward, bringing the dagger down hard on the curt top of her head. The skull collapsed beneath the motion, brain matter and blood marring the side of my hand. The door at the top of the stairs jerked open, hitting me hard in the side.
Alex didn't apologize, simply grabbed me by my upper arm to jerk me to my feet. His eyes skated over my exposed ankles, and then the corpse of a woman laying flat on the ground. He was satisfied, but didn't say as much. There was a lumbering groan and a crash as something hit against the half-open back door, the miniature curtain rod losing purchase as it fell to the kitchen floor. The zombie moved forward into the now open frame, his face a massacre of open wounds. Alex pulled the dagger from my hands and in the same fluid motion arced a hand to penetrate the bulging circumference of the man's forehead. "You shouldn't have screamed," he told me, and limping led the way through the back door.
I didn't have the energy to argue.
Our second home was made in the woods, between the seizing tremble of the trees. The residence was no longer safe, and in a slow agitated pace we darted between yards and cars, leaving the growing mass of the suburbs. Our muscles ached, my gums still bleeding as we walked. I didn't complain, not knowing how Alex continued to limp forward when he was obviously in a great deal of pain. We stopped when we were as far away from the residential suburb of Tarrot as we could move, stopping before we were too tired to make camp. All around us were miles of woods, and in between the trunks the wind whistled mercilessly.
The tent was really small, definitely a one-person camper. I helped Alex with the spokes mutely, wondering how either of us could fit in there, especially unable to withstand even the same courtyard without fighting. "I'll take first watch," I told him and he scoffed.
"Just try not to knock anything over." He disappeared into the small tent, a giant lumbering shadow in the miniature green canvas.
I propped up my gun and watched the trees. I knew I shouldn't expect to see anything there, we were off the beaten path, and yet still I was anxious. My insecurity about the past two hours hadn't simply rolled off, instead it seemed to have picked up a narrative. I had to recognize Alex's injury, and my own close calls. In a single mis-step everything could have gone to shit, and yet it hadn't. I couldn't mess up again. I didn't think the entire debacle was my fault, but as the person who had caused the big bang I felt myself compensating by being hyper-aware. Every crack in the woods was a potential threat, the whistle of some lofty bird a greeting call to a walker. I waited, tense, my hands around the back-end of my gun.
Alex fell asleep, sleeping far more than he probably wanted to. It was dark and starless by the time he woke up, crawling from the tent to see me rapidly succumbing to exhaustion. "Wake up," he snapped. "You're going to get us both killed."
"I am awake!" I garbled back, tired and numb with cold. I'd fought to stay awake, against what my body wanted to do but it didn't seem to matter. Alex ignored me, nudging me hard as he dropped to take my spot. I got the message, stepping and brushing myself of the dirt and his presence, moving into the miniature tent without asking how he was feeling. I was too cold to, and he hadn't asked me anyway.
I moved into the sleeping bag, which was warm and smelled like Alex. It was an oddly pleasant sensation, like petrichor and stone. I was asleep within a matter of seconds. It felt like I had only been out for a minute when Alex was unzipping the tent, demanding my attention in a frantic whisper. "What?" I muttered, drugged with the lacing of sleep.
"Get up!" he seethed again, his voice a sharp frenzy as he shook at my shoulder. "I can hear them coming, a whole hoard from the highway. We got to move now!"
Somewhere between the words and the shaking I kicked into gear, shoving off the sleeping bag to crawl after him. I could already hear them too, a nearby mass of uneven crooning. There was the skating sound of something female and nearby, something's vocals gutturally sounded, just to choke and cough on blood pooling their throat. I reached for the tent but Alex shook his head, snagging my arm. "No time."
There was no insult. It was serious.
We darted into the woods, the sound of the stumbling and dying converging like a chorus. Alex was still limping, the passage of time making his wound tender and awful to put his weight onto. I couldn't see his face in the bleak darkness of the woods, led only by the crunching of what I hoped were his footfalls. The zombies weren't aware of us, but as we moved we were making noise and arousing attention. I could hear something shift in their dynamic, alerting them to the nearness of our footfalls. One of them gunned, a throaty barking growl. I out-paced Alex, winding around several trees then slowing so he could catch up. "Keep moving," he snapped, his voice bronchial with the effort to whisper his aggression. I moved up ahead just to double back, moving well ahead of him now.
"Come on, keep up," I told him. I could feel his eyes on me in the dark. I could also feel their eyes, hear the lurching of their footsteps into the mud, the caterwaul of something already dead. I moved ahead once more, slowing as I waited for Alex. I could hear them nearer now, their footsteps a pace behind our own, the bitter wail of their desperation weaving in the air. There was an object in the dark and I squinted, hesitant to break out my light and beam it on the horizon. "It's a cabin," I told Alex as he neared me. "Just a little further."
His hand bracingly grabbed my upper-arm, squeezing too tightly. I held onto my exclamation of pain, moving forward as he forcefully released, stumbling after. I found the porch with a bang of my shin in the dark. When I reached to help Alex he pushed my hand away, pulling himself up onto the sagging deck and nearly crashing through the large doors. I followed him into the cabin, the thick intense smell of tightly packed earth clogging my nose.
It was impossible to see much. I closed the door and Alex moved to the ground, spent. I spun to look for something to block the door with. I felt the wind pick up, breathing into the house. The windows had been shattered. There was no furniture inside the cabin. There was nothing constant, nothing stable. The only reliable thing was the approaching sound of the stumbling hoard.
I hunkered down next to Alex, my belly flat on the rotten floors. Nearby we could hear them, like a rising crashing wave. There was a long "Ohhh," first then a chipping groan. I swallowed tightly as the first few began to pass, waiting for one to turn. Something stumbled, rebounding off the porch and then began to move past, their cries carrying from the front to the side of the house then disappearing into the wood work. Another banged up against the porch and I held my breath, willing it away.
It was like time stood still, my breaths shallow in my chest. I could hear my heart in my ears, and just underneath that was the sound of Alex's own uneven inhales, his exhales like a burst. I held my hand in a fist, my nails clipping my palm as with another thud a zombie bounced off the porch.
I was considering my death, but it wasn't as simple as that. It was rotting hands, pulling you into two different directions until you split down the middle, spurting like a macabre fountain. Then there would be the teeth. It wasn't a quick death, I knew, I'd heard it before.
There was a creak as one found purchase, pacing the length of the cabin.
Slowly, the hoard converged and then moved on, leaving the straggler in their dust. The last groans faded, leaving the echoing thud of the lone walker on the porch. I didn't dare move from my spot on the floor, my anxiety a knot in my stomach.
Alex breathed in paces besides me, pausing with every thud. His instinctual fear of death was almost a comfort, the fact that he was as unnerved as I was. The last footfalls of the mob disappeared leaving the lone straggler and the two of us behind them.
There was a thud as the lone zombie hit the cabin wall again, the soft issuance of a moan. Alex seemed to breathe again, and with the dislodging of his air I found my own coming back in.
I don't think we slept more than a handful of minutes. The night was dark and daunting, the presence of the mob too near to merit moving from our places on the floor. All night long we listened to the thud of the walker, banging up against the wall like a bubble of noise each time sleep cradled us again.
I woke with a start, each time again, expecting it to be bursting in through the door. It would be just a shadow on a shadow, and that would be all it would take. A dark night and a building feeling of anxiety. That was all it could take to end it all.
When the first lights dawned and we could make out the apish shape of the creature, Alex stood. He pulled the dagger from his sheath with a weary hand and let the door open with a creak. The creature alerted stumbled for him. I only heard the conclusion, the slicing sound of the dagger as it drove into the cranium and the blow the porch took as the zombie hit.
Alex's ankle took three days to heel. It was a long three days.
With first light we were able to see the cabin for what it was, an abandoned shell of a home, long without human contact. The windows had been shattered well-before the end, but the oddest thing about it was the station wagon parked up front, and the keys abandoned in the car.
It didn't start, the battery well and done but it ordered a small reprieve from the wind and cold. There was also a coat in the back, left almost considerately by the car's last tenant. It was moth-eaten and reeked of moss but when my teeth were skating against each other in the freezing November nights I didn't really care.
I had left my backpack back at camp with the tent. Alex couldn't think of the word to embody what that meant for me. I thought he was going to let me starve because of the dumb mistake that was in reality his own fault. He hadn't let me grab anything, and if he hadn't fallen asleep on post he never would have realized the mob was converging so late.
When I said as much he snapped at me, and then we didn't talk at all the second night. He didn't eat, so I didn't eat. I think maybe my shuddering got to him, because in the morning he split his final granola bar with me. There was no snippet of an insult attached, and he said nothing when I thanked him.
By the time Alex was ready to start walking again, we were verging on killing each other. It was amazing the toxicity our silence held, interrupted only by gestures and silent destroying glares. It was in forced silence and mutual blame we entered Verona.
"Are you out of your mind?" Alex actually turned his head to sulk at me, which meant tearing his eyes off of the zombies mulling outside the strip plaza. "Or maybe, you're just blind."
"I'm not saying we should just walk right up to it," I bit back, agitated. "It's just if we created a diversion-."
"Because that worked out so well last time," cut in Alex. He had decided the hoard that had met us in the woods was one alerted by the car horn I had set off, conveniently forgetting the first one had existed at all.
"You-," I started but Alex interrupted, stubbornly.
"No diversions. The grocery store is a stupid fucking plan. It's probably been raided twice over. We'll be lucky if we find dental floss. And for what price? Our necks?"
"So, what's the plan then?" I said tartly. We had already hit on two houses before being forced off the block by the stumbling proximity of ex-housewives turned diseased cannibals. One bedazzled and eyeless monster had gotten too close for either of our comfort, leaving us retracting back to the woods empty-handed and hungry as ever. We had happened upon the plaza, moving along in this fashion, stomachs growling audibly.
Alex and I didn't get along when we were full. The chill that stunned me from my core, combined with our hunger and his sore ankle meant we were about a breath away from trading blows. I ground my jaw to re-work the brewing slew of insults as Alex elected to ignore me, examining the plaza again.
"We could circle around the back," I suggested, Alex actually rolled his eyes.
"Twenty up front. We circle around we're going to have to move into sight to get behind anything. I doubt all of them are going to be looking in the same direction at once."
"It's unlikely, without a diversion," I huffed.
Alex looked like he wanted to punch me. Instead, he bit his tongue, in a manner much like my own. He said nothing, which was more annoying than him saying anything at all. "Choices," he said. "Are waiting until they maybe move, or moving on ourselves. I'll be moving on." With that he straightened and backed off from the bush. My anger felt nearly physical, because he knew damn well I wasn't going to stay there by myself.
For a moment, I contemplated doing just that. I was pretty sure Alex wouldn't care one way or the either, but I couldn't stand being alone again and reluctantly I slunk after him.
Alex and I walked in tandem, shifting through the trees that bordered the apartment complex. We had circled it at least four times. I wasn't sure what he was looking for, or how this idea was any smarter than my idea to try for the grocery store.
There weren't many zombies at the front, and one at the back but the building itself had to be full. Even if it had been empty, I was sure it had a buzzer to unlock the front doors which was undoubtedly run on electricity, something the world had been without for quite some time.
Alex stopped short, leaning into the trunk of a orange hued tree to examine the ground-level window of one of the apartments. I followed the pan of his vision to see he was looking into a small blueish living room. The window had been partially boarded shut.
"This is what we're going to do," he said. "I am going to pull back the board and wedge-open the window, you're going to kick open the screen as quietly as possible. Is that something you can handle?" He turned his eyes on me, large, green and mocking.
"Yeah, I can handle it," I snipped back. The nearness of food kept my temper in check.
"Let's move."
With the female zombies back turned, Alex bent at the waist, darting across the yard of the complex. I followed, a fidgeting shadow. In theory the plan had seemed flawless, mainly because of the motivator. In actuality, I lost all nerve as we approached the complex window.
Chances were there was a zombie in there and I was going to meet it leg-first. I considered that this was Alex's plan, and the reason he was manning the board. In my hunger, the murder-attempt after all this time, and in such a risky way, did not seem obscure at all. He pinched his fingers beneath the plank, drawing back hard. The exertion of moving the nailed in board sending blood to his face. The board popped off with a clack and he worked the metal slate between the window and pane. I readied to knock down the screen door, planning on being too fast for anything inside.
The decaying woman, who had been inspecting the grass more than somewhat dazed shifted sharply. She didn't seem startled, instead charging forward with the wild instinct of a lumbering animal. I turned and arced up the rifle, firing it at her head. The bullet shot from the gun in a muffled explosion, her blood painting the field.
I immediately saw stars, stunned as to what had happened. My face smarted wildly and I wondered if she had somehow punched me in the head. I waited for the eclipsing feeling of the bite, a close second to whatever blow had knocked me clean on my back. Instead I saw Alex, looking at me in half-disbelief.
"You've never fucking fired a rifle before, have you?" He wrenched the gun from my hand, holding it around the nozzle and grabbing my arm with the other to wrench me to my feet. I realized I wasn't dead as I cupped my eye, which seemed to bulge in its socket. I knew what had happened immediately. I had heard about kickback before, but been unable to apply any of that knowledge in the split-decision I had made regarding the zombie. "You're lucky you hit her, or she'd be devouring the two of us right now."
"Wasn't luck. I aimed and hit her," I snapped, though it was hard to sound justified when I'd hit myself in the eye with my own rifle.
"You hit something else too," he told me, kicking in the screen. It fell with a flexing whip-like sound, landing onto the sea green couch. He moved into the room, standing on the couch and scanning with the gun.
I moved in afterward, still cupping my eye. Everything had an awful flashbulb effect to it, and I could barely see the apartment.
The living room was empty. Alex shifted to shut the board over the screen, the window pane itself shattered and mostly gone. It was a good expression for the entire place.
The coffee table had been shattered into over a hundred pieces, the television tilted onto its side, a large crack spiraling towards the center.
Alex aligned the rifle with his shoulder, moving like a hardened investigator as he narrowed into the empty kitchen, down the hall, and finally threw open the small bedroom door.
I followed, weapon-less, a small black and blue shadow. When Alex spun around he nearly crashed into me, scowling as he dropped the rifle. "You hold it to your shoulder, not your eye."
"Thanks for the tip," I said, still clutching my eye.
"Let me see." He reached up to pry my hand off of the socket, investigating the impression. "It's going to be black as tar tomorrow. But you won't lose your eye." He sounded wholly unconcerned, stepping around me to raid the small kitchen.
I moved in after him, angry with him but not sure why. He pulled open the pantry doors, revealing nothing. He hesitated to peal back the refrigerator doors, when he did the awful decaying stench filled the apartment like a blossoming cloud of rot. He slammed it back shut, both of us coughing.
He opened the last cabinet, which was also empty. "I told you we should have raided the grocery store," I snapped now. I had a black-eye and it was for absolutely nothing.
"Yeah, and I told you to do whatever you wanted," he hedged, throwing open the bottom cabinets to expose pots, pans and finally bowls.
"Because I was going to stay behind and do that myself."
"Wouldn't kill you to do something yourself." He spun sourly to stare me down. "Or, maybe it would."
"Is that what you want?" I threw back, my own arms folded across my chest defensively. Alex elected not to answer, striding from the kitchen and beginning to wrench out couch cushions, as if hoping to find a hidden lean cuisine. "You're going to ignore me, again. Why am I even here if all you do is ignore me?"
"Then go," he didn't look up from the couch he was destroying.
I turned to examine the apartment door, considering it. He seemed to sense my change in stance, turning to watch and folding his arms. I didn't want to go. I didn't have a thing to take with me, not a bat, a dagger, especially not a rifle.
But he'd directly called me on it, and so, I seriously considered it. Alex was a pain in the neck. Being alone, that was something darker than that.
Alex waited, and so did I. Eventually I looked back toward him, still furious.
"I didn't think so," he said flatly and moved past me to tear apart the bedroom.
Alex didn't seemed to care, so I elected not to talk to him when his search for food in the bedroom and finally the single bathroom turned up nothing. I collapsed on the couch instead, cupping my black eye. Alex re-entered the room, jabbing my shoulder hard. I scooted over so he could sit, accepting the cup he thrust into my hands before it could spill.
We drank in silence, pretending it was something stronger. The gesture wasn't lost on me, though. Alex had pushed me until I couldn't be pushed anymore, and then stopped. It was the most I was getting from him, anyway.
Something was moaning in the hallway, creaking at the stairs that led up to the landing. My eyes snapped open at the sound, my body giving a jerky start.
"He's been doing that for a while," said Alex from the hall. "I don't know why you decided now he was a threat. He was all the way by our door a minute ago. He's going back up again."
There was a creaking sound as the zombie leant on the stairs, followed by a somewhat further rustle.
I don't know why my body had decided to clue in either, but it had also decided not to fall back asleep. My whole head throbbed from the center of my right eye. My hour of relief was over.
"Why are you up?" I sought Alex's shadow in the dark, but the black was immaculate. I could just make his shape leaning up against the bedroom hallway, where I had thought he'd been sleeping.
"I was listening to it," he said flatly. "I thought that was pretty obvious."
"You just said he's not a threat," I defended irritably.
"I didn't say that," said Alex. "Of course he's a threat." There was a crunching sound as Alex's boots crushed across the glass, his body dropping onto the couch besides mine.
"So what do we do?"
I could feel Alex looking at me, inspecting me. "Nothing," he drawled. "We can't see our hands in front of our face. Why would we do anything? He's a threat because he's evil incarnate wearing skin. We're quiet and he won't see us. Can you handle being quiet?"
"I can handle being quiet," I huffed.
"Is this in the same way you could handle the rifle, because-."
"Just shut up!" I yelled, my voice carrying. It burst inside my own head, making me feel light and woozy. "You never fucking stop, just stop-." I paused, caught by the delirium in my own tone. I coughed, trying to blame the cracking on the dryness of my throat. I couldn't quite convince myself so I doubted I could convince Alex. I didn't care anyway, I told myself, tugging my legs closer to my body. My feet were cold in my boots and I was hungry and miserable.
"Don't yell," he said tonelessly. "We were literally, just talking about that."
I exhaled hotly, feeling very bull-like. "Then don't push my buttons." I shifted in my spot, trying to make myself smaller than the imprint of my warmth, like I could wear it on me. I missed the stupid moth-y coat. "Was there a blanket in the bedroom?"
Alex didn't answer. After a pause I felt his weight levy, the glass crunching under-foot. I wondered if he was just going to go back to bed, but he returned a slightly larger shadow, dropping the blanket on the couch. I tugged it closer, tucking it into the cushions around me like a nest. Alex probably should have offered me the blanket in the first place, so I didn't thank him. I was after all probably less than half his size. If we were being logical we could have shared the damn thing.
But however tactical Alex was, his anger took the front burner to of his logic. So did mine.
And so we sat in silence, as if we were in fact alone as the creature in the hall lumbered down the stairs, calling out again in hunger.
I could almost relate.
The door was cracked just enough to see into the common hallway, letting in the colder air that leaked in from the main doors. I could hear the zombie on the stairs, and it made me feel like I was going to throw up, despite how very empty my stomach was. Alex looked to me, like a silent reminder of the plan that I had not wanted to do.
"You can't just sit there all the time," he'd said, as if he'd forgotten the many times I had not just sat there. He wanted me to take down the lone zombie in the hall, but now that I saw it I realized how large he was.
He wasn't exactly broad, but he was taller than me. His body was sweating blood from the front, a knife still jutting from a cavity in the heart-area that some poor sucker had aimed for. There was blood all around his mouth, and an exposed band of tissue and muscle like a hollow ditch around his neck – obviously the entry wound.
It was hard to see him as being a person, ever. He moved in a unwieldy careen, like he wasn't used to the weight of the atmosphere. His eyes were cloudy, leaking a mucous yellow fluid as he bumbled forward, rasping shallowly. He scraped up along the apartment door, leaving a small blood spatter as he continued on. I waited two clicking steps before pushing open the apartment door, stepping onto the linoleum. My heart was in my throat as I threw back my arm, aiming the baseball bat in a hard arc at the back of its head.
The bat seemed to rebound more than sink, the zombie turning and growling at attention. I backed up, blanching. Alex didn't move from the doorway and I wondered if he even cared. Was this his master plan to finish me off? It didn't need to make sense when I was still so hungry and frightened.
The man let out a terrible screech, throwing out an arm in the hopes of scraping the skin clean off my face.
She was never going to make it. If she couldn't face off one walking-corpse in a hallway, there wasn't much hope for her at all. It made me feel bitterly mad, instead of sad. It was just easier to get angry, here, at the end. I wrapped my fingers on the door to get the corpse's attention, rising my dagger in a greeting gesture. With the zombie's attention elsewhere, Eve rose the bat and crashed it into the side of its temple. It flew into the hallway, knocked off balance. I let the rest of the door fawn open, Eve was now looking to it, hesitating.
"You've come so close to not fucking it up completely. Don't stop now," I encouraged.
She shot me a blazing look before moving towards the zombie. It was dazed but too motivated to assess it's injuries, attempting to get onto all fours and crawl to her. It hadn't done more than prop its arm up before she brought the bat down on its head, a blood-spray following the momentum of the bat that colored the hallway. The zombie was still attempting to drunkenly get to its feet, even as she rose the bat a third and a fourth time. It was the fifth silencing blow that did it, leaving brain matter exposed to the world and the creature finally limp.
"And imagine, if there were two of them. You spend half an hour on the weak one while the bigger one gnaws on your bone marrow."
She flickered her eyes to me again, still clutching the bat tightly. The blood waxed across her face almost making her look malicious, and I considered for a moment she might turn the bat on me next. She must have been hungry though because she didn't argue past that, instead tromping over to the door and giving the knob a practice turn.
"Don't be stupid." I grabbed her hand mid-flex. "You're alerting anything in there, ringing the knob like a dinner bell. Use your brain. You still have one."
Eve wrenched her hand out from under mine, stepping back so I could pick the lock. She looked furious, which was better than her looking sad. I had thought maybe verging on starvation and with a large black eye she'd given herself, she might be starting to chip. I'd heard her voice catch the other night, but she was straight-backed today, her eyes black and indignant.
I was glad to see it, even if she couldn't understand why.
I dropped to attend to the lock, slipping one hair-pin in the key hole and using the other to align the bolts. Four minutes of rapt clicking and with a satisfying snap the bolt came away. The door pushed open an entire half-inch before sticking on the dead-bolt. There was a stiff crack as it did, and just as suddenly a roar as a bleeding face penetrated the space, jaw-wound open disconnected and gaping. I gave a start, jumping back and smashing into Eve, who stumbled backwards cursing. I quickly attended to my dagger, bringing it up and striking into the corpses forehead. I pulled it back bloodied, a heavy clot of brain matter sticking to the blade. I cleaned it on the ends of my shirt, reaching up to pinch the dead-bolt and using the dagger to saw at the chain.
I pushed open the door, stepping aside so Eve could lead. She still had my bat loosely held in her wrist, with her other arm she was rubbing her shoulder. I rolled my eyes at her and she moved forward, bringing back the bat, her eyes darting around the room as we stepped over the zombie.
I checked our blind corners first, then assessed the damage. Someone had been in the middle of breakfast when this all began. The table was half-turned over, upside-down bowls of cereal and congealed milk adorning the top. The terrible smell of rotting milk permeated the apartment. A vase had shattered near the coffee table, a solitary pillow having fallen off the couch.
There was a shadow on the floor that Eve was analyzing, hesitating to approach. I steered her forward with a hard prod and she shook me off, approaching the face down mass. It was the man of the house, maybe the husband of the woman who had greeted us at the door. He wasn't moving, and remained face-down on the floor. At the back of his head was a blood-spill, highlighted by the feeble morning light from the window. "I guess she shot him," said Eve, glancing to look at the woman's crumpled body than back to the man. "He probably bit her, she shoved him off and shot him in the head."
"Should have shot him before he bit her," I expounded. Eve scowled.
"It was probably hard for her. I think they were married." She was looking at the man's wedding band.
"Because no one has ever had to shoot their family member before," I remarked harshly, turning my back on Eve. I examined the bedroom next.
The bed had been stripped of sheets. I found them blood-stained in the hallway, obviously the woman had attempted to make some kind of tourniquet of them. The room itself was relatively clean. There hadn't been too much fighting before the woman had gone for the gun. I wonder if she'd anticipated having to use it, under entirely different circumstances. There had been bruises on her upper-arms and face, colorless and fading like an after-thought. This had been a long time coming, but had taken them both out.
That's what the infection did, re-wrote the entire thing. If you went to the extreme it was still a notch above you, tripping you so you would fall.
I checked the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet I found a small first aid kit, plastic and yellowing. It was one of those old ones you acquired by some miracle of chance, and slowly took apart. I took out the nail clippers, some papery gauze and a bottle of aspirin.
"Alex?" Eve's voice didn't sound frightened. I took my time shouldering my pack to join her in the kitchen. She grinned, for the first time maybe since I'd met her. I grinned too. She was standing in front of a cabinet, full of cheap canned food.
Not all of it was something you wanted to just dig into. There was Manwhich, a thick nauseating tomato sauce, and instant noodles which you needed hot water for. We packed them anyway, knowing there would be a time we were hungry enough to eat instant noodles topped in spaghetti-water.
Creamed soups went into the pack, used more for topping things in baking than directly eating. Even now the thought of consuming the sludge directly wasn't off-putting. I would eat almost anything.
I wasn't reduced to condensed soup however. I opened a jar of peanut butter, moving onto the couch and away from the terrible milk-spill to consume my stock. Eve returned with canned Ravioli, eating like a dog with a fork. She wiped her face on her sleeve, the spaghetti-sauce smearing with the drying blood.
"You eat like an animal," I told her, sucking peanut butter off the spoon.
"I am an animal," she pointed out, leaning back into the couch. "And you're not so regal yourself."
"Were you a college kid? Before? You talk like a college kid."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Eve didn't pause her fork, simply shooting me a smoldering look.
"There's a type," is all I said. Eve wasn't satisfied with that and set down her fork, waiting for me to embellish. I dropped the jar of peanut butter, moving to the kitchen to retrieve a glass of stagnant juice from the awful smelling fridge. I wondered when apple juice would qualify as alcohol as I sipped.
"A type?" Eve repeated, twisting to face me in the kitchen. "And what type am I?"
She was just going to get mad. She had to know that. "You must like being pissed off," I told her, setting my glass on the counter top.
"No, you like to be evasive then act like it's my fault when I get offended by all the things you're not saying."
"I'm not evasive," I challenged. "I tell you when you're acting like a dumbass, don't I?"
"My type," Eve repeated.
I tipped my head upward, as if seeing her future in the water-spot on the ceiling. "Trust fund baby," I suggested, dropping my head to examine her. "A bit spoiled. Probably had horseback riding lessons as a kid, and art classes. High A's, maybe the occasional disappointing B. Apple of your parents eyes."
Eve grinned, it was a mocking grin. "You, are so wrong," she told me. "You found me in the suburbs, you can guess how old I am, so you think you know me?" She rolled her eyes.
"I do know you," I told her. "Maybe not where you come from," I started when she made to interrupt. "But I know you now, and no matter how much school you have behind you, you don't have an ounce of survival in you. You don't know how to make a fire. You can't fire a gun properly. It takes you five blows to kill a walker. Nothing you know is important."
Eve's eyed bored into mine. Finally, she shrugged though she still looked frenzied. "So, what was your all important childhood like Alex?" It was a tender topic, and she knew it when she looked at me. "You've probably been firing a gun like Daddy taught since Daddy left. He taught you how to pick locks, fire a car, probably had your first criminal offense before you were twelve years old." Eve moved to her feet, folding her arms, squinting at me for a better reading. "He probably came back from his bender's mad and hung over. I'm sure he beat the crap out of you."
I moved across the room solidly, Eve didn't flinch away but she cringed when I grabbed the front of her shirt in my fist. She wouldn't back down but I could smell her apprehension. "Psych Major," was all she said, her voice gravelly.
"You're pathetic," I told her releasing her shirt. I grabbed my backpack off the couch, letting the door bang as I left her behind.
I wasn't sure if Alex was coming back. And I felt pretty pathetic too. They had been low blows and apparently close to some version of the truth. I had been mad though, the insinuation that my life had been paid for, that I'd ever been taken care of before now.
But the anger just made me feel empty. Alex was a jerk, but he was looking out for me. There was someone watching my back when I blundered, and even if he was just a torrent of insults there were plenty of times I had made things harder for the both of us and he hadn't abandoned me before. Maybe he'd had enough.
I was hurt, mad and too confused to think clearly. Instead I decided to take fifteen minutes to maintain myself. I washed the blood off my face and cleaned around my purple eye, the skin feeling hot and pulsing into my head. I searched the medicine cabinet and found a travel-size Tylenol two-pack, which I swallowed half of.
After I moved into the oddly empty bedroom. The bed was still naked, topped with regular pillows. I had the weird urge to make it but pushed it off.
The woman was taller than me, so her pants weren't going to do me any good. I washed my jeans in her sink, slinging them back on still damp. I exchanged my underclothes for a pair with the tag still on, and a bra that was too lacey for my own taste. The closest thing I could find to a fitting shirt was a chartreuse blouse, which hung over my lower body loosely. I was snapping the last buttons when the front door to the apartment bobbed open, Alex leaning on the door frame as I finished.
He didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. I felt wrong but I also felt mad, leaving me in a stubborn angry haze. I settled on pretending nothing had happened. lifting the large sweater off the bed to slip my arms into, thumbing the small pack I'd found at the back of the closet. "It's small, but it's something," I said indicating to the pack. "Where'd you go?"
Alex folded his arms and for a moment I thought he was going to ignore me. "Upstairs," he said finally. "Sounded like a lot of walkers in the apartments. Family units are above this one. There was a quiet one at the end but as soon as I opened it I got bombarded. There was a lot of noise and the upper floor's in revolt – we should go."
"Still want me to come?" I probably shouldn't have said anything. Alex simply shrugged, his face a mask.
He moved to drop his pack on the bed, unzipping it and unclasping the fashionable lock on my own pack. He switched over a couple of the canned food items, handing me back the bat. I took it, twisting the weight in my hands.
I still had the urge to apologize, but it was killed by the feeling of Alex's anger washing over me, the squishing feeling of being left behind however momentarily. Instead I showed him the coat hanging in the hall closet, with an insular layer warmer than his own. He exchanged it with his half-destroyed one. As we collected our things it was in mutual heavy silence. I wondered if our quiet communicated the same things, or nothing at all.