Recap: "...and then she snuggled into my chest. We fell asleep that night with smiles on out faces."
The next several days were arguably the best days of my life. The noise outside that had been hellishly chaotic quieted greatly and we had to be even more quiet, usually not even whispering but that was easy as our mouths were usually full. Full of each other's mouths. Other than one accidental slip of the hand (I'm not going to say who's or where), we kept it to just kissing and cuddling, but we did sleep in the same bed. All of our clothes stayed on, in other words. That replaced the board games as our main form of entertainment, so boredom was taken care of. We ran out of Honey Nut Cheerios, our staple food at first because we weren't sure what was safe to eat raw, but at the one week mark we calculated that we had only used a quarter of the food. The tap water went from murky brown to nonexistent on the tenth day, so we had to start using plastic bags as toilets. We agreed that that was easier and less smelly than a bucket. The natural gas went on the twelfth day, and by then we had packed the ready-to-eat foods into two backpacks in case we needed to make a desperate escape. Also, because we always made sure our weapons never left our person, I made a crude sheath for Faye's kitchen knife out of cut-outs from a cheap brown leather jacket of my dad's that I found in the back of his closet. It wasn't very good, but at least she was able to walk around and use both hands at the same time, instead of carrying it around.
Because of all of the preparations, when the first zombie started banging on the front door well into the second week of post-apocalyptia, we were ready for any outcome we could think of. We were not sure what we did to attract attention, maybe the zombies could smell that every few days we cooked real food, but they found us, and before an hour was up there were ten of them trying to get in. We already had everything important upstairs, but we took the time to bring the bed up with us. Then we wedged a metal bed frame between the stairs and the low ceiling and piled stuff, including the queen sized bed we had been sleeping on, on top of it. We knew it would take the zombies a while to break through the first defenses, so we used the time to check and recheck our supplies. We made sure the backpacks were full of water bottles and food that could be eaten raw, the few tools and items from my original survival kit, and my dad's prescription drugs, which neither of us knew how to use properly but I thought they would be valuable trade items.
Because for the past few weeks we had been spending most of the time close together and under a comforter, we hadn't really noticed that outside our safe zone the air was getting colder. What we were wearing showed this, as it was rather thin, not being either warm or durable. Noticing that we both had on what would be considered nightclothes, I suggested that we change into clothes that were warmer, more rugged, and that had large pockets to carry things. We rifled through my dresser and closet, the moaning from outside making us jumpy and on alert. We guessed jeans would be somewhat bite-resistant, so we both wore that under other things. I picked out a pair of cargo pants to go over the jeans and a t-shirt under a hoodie with my leather jacket over it. The hoodie had a large pouch in the front and the jacket had a few pockets and seemed pretty tough as materials go. Faye found a pair of waterproof windbreaker pants for over her jeans and a tan pair of shorts that looked like a mix between khakis and cargo pants. She found one of my nicer shirts, it was a black button up dress shirt with thin brown stripes that looked way better than it sounds, a gray hoodie and over that went a winter coat of mine. While we were at it I figured fresh-smelling, clean clothes would be a valuable luxury that we could trade if we met any survivors, so I dug up another backpack and filled it with as much of my best clothes as I could. It was really lucky that my dad had just done laundry before the outbreak.
Once we had our attire picked out I realized what was about to happen and said, "Uh, I'll go change in the bathroom."
I picked up the pile of clothes and was two steps from the door when Faye said, "Jack, um, don't leave." I looked back at her, seeing her eyes widened in fear at the sound of zombies clawing their way into the house, and nodded.
We didn't face each other as we changed, but we didn't face away either. We both looked, and we both knew the other was looking, and neither of us said anything.
When we were clothed again we put on our shoes, which felt weird because we had been barefoot for so long, and got ready to go. I gave Faye the swimming goggles, because my normal glasses would protect my eyes a little from the dust and glass particles of the attic. Once we heard the zombies getting into the downstairs we filled our pockets with water bottles (we were only able to fit about half of them into the backpacks with the food, and we wound up leaving behind about six), put on the backpacks and went. We went up through the trapdoor, closing it behind us, just like planned. The trip through the attic was horrible for me, every inch of exposed skin itched and burned, but Faye had it a bit easier with the goggles protecting her eyes. When we lowered ourselves into the house we were lucky that there were no infected and we quietly searched the medicine cabinets and looked for weapons. Not wanting to be discovered and swarmed, we didn't spend long, but we found a few prescription drugs that looked like they might be useful. I put them with the clothes because they were non-essential and could be sacrificed if need be.
We went out the back because the wooden dividers kept us out of view of the small swarm around my house. Makeing sure to keep an eye out for more zombies, we quietly made our way to the street and up towards Main St. We had agreed that our first destination should be the police station next to the gas station that had exploded. I thought that, since it was the first place people would have gone, it would have been overrun with infected survivors, makeing it almost impossible to defend efficiently in the first few days of the outbreak. Either everyone inside would be dead, or everyone inside would be living dead, but we knew we would not be confronting any other survivors yet. Sure enough, when we cautiously made our way across the deserted street to the station, we found that there was not a single zombie trying to get in, confirming that there was not a single survivor in the building. The side facing the gas station had a hole in it about five feet wide, so we decided to go in there, as the doors were securely barricaded. There was a horrid smell emanating from the opening, much worse than the smell of unwashed bodies that we were gradually being desensitized too. I was wary of the possibility that we might meet a hoard of zombies inside, so we waited just outside the gaping hole and listened for shufling footsteps. After ten seconds I took a quick glance in and saw it was a garage for several firetrucks and two ambulances. I didn't see any movement so we made our way in.
AN/ I'm working on some other stories right now, but seeing how Max Brooks usually ended stories fairly early and how this was supposed to be a short story, when I start up on this one again (definitely before the end of this school year) I'll wrap it up quickly.
