Chapter 10
My eyes stung bitterly as they struggled to keep open against the harsh wind that fought its way into the cab through the broken passenger window. The caramel tufts of hair that poked out of Ellis's cap whipped into a frenzy, his eyes just as red as mine.
We had been driving for a long time, longer than it seemed, the sinking sun now beginning to blaze over the dusty horizon, sending flares of pink and red across the inky sky.
"Shit" Ellis murmured, breaking the silence as he tapped the dashboard "we're running low on gas, this baby ain't gonna make it too much farther."
It wasn't a question, it wasn't open for discussion. It was just a small statement to stop the deathly, uncomfortable silence from gnawing at us. It was just another thing that made this day even worse.
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and leaned up from Ellis's shoulder to look at the dashboard myself.
He was right, the tiny dial was flickering in the deadly red zone of 'E.' We were lucky to get this truck and just as more lucky that it had fuel in it. In act of desperation and fear, people took everything they could and fuel was not excluded.
I sat back against the seat, gripped tightly to the fabric of Ellis's shirt and hoped that a safe building would appear on the horizon very soon. I wondered about the boys in the back of the truck; Coach, Nick, Francis. Were they opting for an awkward silence to deal with today's tragedy, just like Ellis and I were?
I kicked off my sneakers and pulled my legs up onto the seat in a effort to sleep. I had to be honest; I was exhausted.
I snuggled closer into the fabric of Ellis's shirt but each time I closed my eyes, a flash of images were strewn before me. Bill, Louis, Rochelle, each of them crying out to me through a gurgle of blood that rose in their throat.
Those were the images that kept jolting me awake for the rest of the journey, leaving me still longing for rest and for some way to cleanse my head of everything I'd seen.
By the time I had finally given up on my sleep, Ellis had been forced to switch on the single working headlight in order to see the road ahead.
The air that whipped around the cab was now icy, our surroundings draped in an overwhelming curtain of darkness that could hold our worst fears.
"Shit, I don't want us to have to camp out in the truck tonight" Ellis grumbled "but it's lookin' that way if we don't find somewhere soon."
"What's that up there?" I pointed out of the windshield toward a piercing light up ahead.
"Hmmm" Ellis poked his head out of the broken window, holding tightly onto his hat as he squinted against the wind. He ducked his head swiftly back into the cab, a small smile on his face.
"It's another building…shit, looks tiny though" Ellis's smiled faded with a sigh "But it's the best we're gonna get, maybe it'll have some gas pumps."
As the store in the distance began to draw closer, I realised just how small it was. It really was tiny.
It was a small, paint-peeled shack that looked quite out of place. The doors and windows were boarded up with plywood and the porch was littered with broken glass and coils of barbed wire. And yet, despite its look of chaotic preparation, I guessed that whoever had been there had moved on.
Ellis pulled the truck up outside the store, creating clouds of dust as the tires ground against the dry gravel, stirring up an orchestra of coughing from the back of the truck.
Instead of piling out the truck eagerly, everyone sat silently staring at the empty building. The sign outside notified us that we were, in fact, looking at a bank and not a store. Now I was even more confused, since when did banks come bite-sized?We watched, waiting for any sign of movement, a movement that told us to keep driving until our fuel ran out and then run. Where? I didn't know. But, wherever we went, we had to stay together.
Ellis turned his gaze toward me, the same look in his eyes that told me he had the same thoughts in his head. He stared at me until his bottom lip began to quiver, that was when he decided to step out of the cab.
"Ain't no use in sittin' around" He muttered hoarsely, slamming the door behind him. I didn't hesitate in following him. I shoved open the door and stepped out into the night, my feet landing softly on the road.
I headed round the back of the truck to find Coach, Nick and Francis, all cautiously watching Ellis approach the plastered door. Nick turned his head to me slowly, a cigarette slipping from his lips, his eyes swimming.
He slipped a hand around my arm and cupped my elbow, before leading me up towards Ellis.
A part of my brain noted that Francis had a cigarette too, holding it between his lips a little more carefully than Nick. They were getting along now, but why wouldn't they after today. It was no use fighting, not when reality had been dropped on us so suddenly.
Ellis eyed the door, as if he were challenging it, before sharply kicking the boards, ripping the wood from it's hinges. So there was no door, just plywood. We'd have to nail that back in before we slept.
I let Nick lead me into the threshold of the door as we watched Ellis hesitantly feel the wall beside him for a light. Francis and Coach stood with us as we all held our breath and stared into the shadows.
"Ah" Ellis murmured, as if pleasantly surprised. I heard a stream of frustrating clicking, the sound of a light switch refusing its order.
"Damn, no power" Ellis muttered bitterly, turning to face us "Anybody got a torch?"
"I have on my pistols" I replied, pulling them from their holsters and flicking on their lights as proof, illuminating the shadows around us.
Ellis slipped one from my hand and scanned the room, a room much smaller than I'd thought.
There wasn't a great deal of furniture in the room, just an overturned table and scattered pieces of chairs. A velvet rope, once used for orderly queuing, was spread across the tiled floor, as were numerous sheets of paper. The back wall had 3 glass-panelled booths spread across it, booths once used to exchange money. Not that money meant anything now.
"Alright" Ellis turned back to us, seemingly satisfied that the first room was clear "Nick, you got a pistol too, right?"
Nick used his free hand to grab his pistol from his belt and flick it's light on with his thumb. "I sure have."
"Alright, Coach, Francis. You go through that door there." Ellis shone the torch to his left, revealing a brittle wooden door that clung desperately to it's hinges. "Nick, you go right. Zoey and I will go behind the desks, 'round by the vaults. This place ain't this big, but you see anything, you holler and we'll re-group at the truck."
The group around me nodded obediently and, as Ellis held his hand out toward mine, I felt Nick's grip fall from my elbow. I handed my gun to Francis-Coach seemed pretty well equipped with an axe-and wormed my fingers into Ellis's.
We hesitantly stepped into the room and, satisfied that it really was empty, turned our backs on the others to search our designated areas.
Ellis shone the light through the glass of each booth, trying desperately to see the room behind, whilst my eyes searched for a door.
"Doesn't look like anything's in there" Ellis murmured, his free hand still gripping tightly to mine "Any easy way to get in?"
"It doesn't look like the door's out here" I replied sadly "there's got to be another way."
Ellis slipped his hand from mine to curve over his eyes, creating a clearer view as he squinted against the glass. I felt along the wall beside me, hoping to find the slit in the wall that meant they simply had a well disguised door.
Suddenly, Ellis screamed loudly and stumbled back onto the floor, causing my body to jolt. Coach and Francis came running through, their faces painted with panic, whilst Ellis simply laid on the floor, panting and scowling.
"Goddamn it, Nick! You scared the shit out of me!" He yelled angrily, pulling himself up.
"Sorry" Nick's voice was muffled from beyond the glass "the door's through to the right, already unlocked."
"You guys find anything?" Ellis asked, turning to Coach and Francis, his face a little pink with embarrassment.
"Nothing" Francis said firmly. He took a deep inhale of his cigarette before his voice lowered to a growl "I hate banks…"
We traced Nick's steps through the door to the right, entering a room that had a couple of desks and a smashed computer on the floor. Nick poked his head out of a door at the far end of the room, his small, goofy smile lighted by the torches. It seemed scaring Ellis has lifted his mood slightly.
"Is there vaults in there?" I asked eagerly, his mood reflecting just a little. It seemed we had given the tiny bank an all clear, but a vault had to be the safest it was going to get.
"Yeah, but unless we've got a safecracker among us, we're not getting in" Nick's smile faded "those things are locked tight."
"Looks like this place wasn't a hold out" Coach murmured "folks just cleared out, ain't nobody been here for years."
Nick threw his cigarette to the floor and rubbed the toes of his shoe against it. "Looks like this place is gonna have to do for the night."
"Looks that way" Ellis replied, hazy for just a moment before his sudden arise of leadership overtook once again "Alright, Coach, go grab our stuff from the truck and start setting up. Zoey, you and Francis grab all pieces of wood you can find and shove it in here" Ellis pointed to the floor just in front of his feet.
"We're gonna need light and warmth, so we're gonna have to build a fire. Nick, you gimmie a hand putting this plywood back up." Francis and I simply nodded at each other before I began gathering the scattered pieces of paper and Francis began piling the parts of chair in the centre of the room.
Coach returned with an armful of rucksacks, ducking beneath Nick and Ellis's early reconstruction of the doorway, his torch tucked under his arm.
In a matter of minutes, a silence of working that need not be broken, Francis and I had collected a decent pile of wood in the centre of the room.
Coach had spread our sleeping bags a safe distance around it, leaving Rochelle's things by the door. I didn't know if we'd be taking it again in the morning, but I knew that none of us would be comfortable sleeping in Rochelle's bag, though our desperation might lead us to using the food designated for her.
"Alright" Ellis coughed, stepping back to admire his work of a fully boarded door "that should hold up." He and Nick had managed to board the plywood back up with scraps of wire as weak nails. It wouldn't hold back the infected, but at least we didn't have to look out into the night. "Damn, I just hope the truck stays fit."
Nick gave him a disgusted look, as if he was appalled that Ellis was even thinking about the safety of the goddamn truck. "Let's get that fire lit, get some light in this place."
He fished a small box of matches out of his pocket and struck one. Coach pulled the sleeping bags back a little, just as a precaution, before I handed Nick a scrunched ball of paper. He lit the end, blew on it gently and tucked it beneath the pile of wood.
As I focused of the growing light in the heart of a pile of splintered wood, I suddenly felt the pit of my stomach begin to knot. Tasteless salvia pooled in my mouth and, as I touched a hand to my forehead, it suddenly felt clammy."Coach, can I borrow that gun?" I asked, slightly impatient.
"Urh…" Coach was now sat on his sleeping bag, waiting for the fire to grow "yeah, sure." He passed me the gun-painfully slowly at that-before I flicked the light on and dodged out of the room.
"Zoey?" I heard Ellis call, his voice worried. I ignored him and ran through behind the booths, shining the flashlight desperately from wall to wall. The light suddenly reflected back at me and it took me a few seconds to realise I was looking at the corner of a mirror, just visible through the crack of a wooden door.
I bolted towards it, practically throwing myself to the floor, the gun scattering across the tiled floor and spraying it's light directly into my eyes. But I was already knelt over a grimy looking toilet without a seat, a small part of my brain telling me to scoop my hair back as the foul, bitter taste of acid flooded my throat.
My body shook as I spluttered, vomiting nosily into the stained porcelain bowl. I panted desperately, shutting my eyes tightly and trying to steady myself, my hands still shakily gripping my hair.
"Zoey?" Ellis's voice was just a whisper, something that would have shocked me had I not felt already vulnerable. I turned my head slowly to see his scuffed shoes stood in the doorway. He knelt down to look at me, his eyes sympathetic "you ok, sweetheart?"
"Yeah" I croaked, turning my head away. If my cheeks could have flushed with embarrassment, they would have. "I-I'm, I'm just fine."
The feeling had come on so suddenly that it worried me. But then, it could have been just about anything. Stress, fear, out-of-date food, I was exposed to all of them.
I felt a warm hand rub my back and watched the light be snatched away from my eyes as Ellis took the gun. We stayed there for a while, Ellis and I, his hand continuing to rub and pat my back whilst I stayed hunched over the porcelain. The burning in my throat began to die after a while, though my stomach still churned.
I finally found it in myself to limply pull away from the bowl, one hand still laced in my hair, the other rested on my knee as I stared hazily at the tiled floor."C'mon, darlin" Ellis whispered, tracing his fingers over the skin of my hand "let's get you up, get ya some water." I let him worm his hand into mine and pull me up from the floor.
Still feeling sick and very light headed, I allowed him to lead me back through the bank, the flashlight of my pistol lighting our way until I was taken aback by the glow of the fire. The flames had certainly grown since I'd been out, creating a fire that both warmed and illuminated the entire room.
Coach and Nick were both laid inside their sleeping bags, presumably asleep, whilst Francis was sat upright, staring into the flames. He had another cigarette between his teeth, though I wasn't sure if he'd asked for it or taken it this time.
"Here, sit down" Ellis murmured, leading me to a sleeping bag. I sat obediently and looked up from the fire to look at Francis, studying the stress that was etched into his face. He pulled his gaze from the fire, allowing our eyes to meet for just a second.
"You alright, kid?" Francis asked, his brow furrowing with concern."Yeah" I nodded weakly "just a little…sick."
Francis's frown deepened "It's been a long day, you've had a lot to deal with.""So has everyone else" I objected.
"Yeah, but what more can you do to a man that's lost it all?"
"…Yeah" I muttered weakly in a pathetic reply, returning my eyes to the fire. Maybe Coach and Nick weren't asleep, I didn't know if I'd be able to sleep tonight.
"Here" Ellis murmured, appearing beside me once again, holding out a bottle of water.
I took it and drank greedily, the stale tasting water sending me back to when I'd first joined this group. I wished I had painkillers like I had then, but we hadn't seen any for a very long while, unfortunately.
The acid sting in my throat had been soothed, yet my stomach still hurt and I felt completely fatigued. The warmth of the fire was lulling me to a drowsy state and numbing my mind from the horrors of the day.
I screwed the cap back on the bottle and handed it back to Ellis, who was now sitting beside me, his legs laid out with his sneakers kicked off. As he tucked the bottle back into a backpack, I slid out of my own shoes and laid down to rest my head on his turned back and gave a small chuckle as I stared up at him, our eyes melting into one another. He leant down to tenderly kiss my forehead and wrapped an arm around my waist in a firm grip.
I closed my eyes and let him soothe me, he was the most effective painkiller I had ever known. The warmth of the fire, the feel of fabric from Ellis's shirt; it seemed I would get sleep after all tonight.
Ellis remained fairly still, only occasional turning his body slightly or exhaling steadily. The fire crackled and spat, the only noise for a while until I heard the ruffling of a sleeping bag and the tap of shoes against the tiled floor.
"I'm going for a cigarette" I heard Nick's gruff voice. So he wasn't asleep after all. "You want one?"
There was no reply, so I assumed somebody shook their head. I guessed it was Francis, he was the only other one in the group who smoked, from what I saw.
Nick's shoes clicked against the tiles, fading away as I imagined him striding out into the other room. Coach tended to be quite picky about where Nick smoked, so he tended to smoke outside or in a different room.
I didn't know if Coach was awake, but it was courteous of Nick to leave all the same. I began to wonder just how many windows were open, because I could barely smell the smoke from the fire.
"Is Zoey asleep?" asked a deep voice. Francis.
"Yeah" Ellis replied "she tends to fall asleep early, gets tired real easy."
"That's pretty cute."
"Yeah."
Their conversation fell silent, though it felt like a hesitant silence, as if both of them had created a sudden, awkward atmosphere. Perhaps Nick had wandered back in, though I didn't hear the click of his dress shoes.
"How was she?" Francis asked, his voice now a considerably weaker "Zoey, I mean, when you…when you found her."
Ellis's body stiffened a little, taken aback by his question. "Well, urrh…she was in a real bad state" Ellis murmured sadly.
He cupped his hand over my cheek, checking for just a second, before he turned my face away from the sweltering flames. My flushed skin brushed against the fabric of his shirt, tempting me to sleep and yet I couldn't. Not yet.
"There was blood just…everywhere, all round her. Her legs were all torn up, I was surprised she could even walk when we got her back to the safe house. Maybe they were just shallow wounds…" I imagined the sweet dimple on Ellis's forehead as he frowned, I could hear the thought in his voice."Fuck" Francis growled "was it really that bad?"
"It was pretty bad" Ellis's voice became a little bitter. "Must've been real hard to leave her like that."
"We had no choice!" Francis still managed to bark, even when his voice was a whisper "We thought she was dead, going back would've been suicide. You saw Rochelle today, it's the same thing!"
It was silent again for a minute, Ellis seemed stunned by Francis's outburst. He held me tighter, almost protectively.
"I'm sorry, man" He whispered at last "You know I didn't mean it like that, ain't a man in the world that could blame ya."
"I'm just glad she's alive" Francis murmured in reply, seemingly calmed from his outburst. "Hell, maybe this was all meant to happen, like fate or something. Certainly did her some good meeting you."
I could practically feel Ellis blush, shifting a little uncomfortably as he did. "Well, I sure am glad I met her. Ain't sure I'd be here right now without her. It's nice to have something to keep ya going, keep ya faith, y'know?"
"You're a lucky guy. She's happy" Francis paused, his voice shaking "and that's all I wanted for her."
The scene around our cosy campfire could have fallen silent or Francis and Ellis could've still been talking, I didn't know. I was slipping into unconsciousness now and yet, although I could feel myself of the verge of sleep, a continuous issue ran through my head.
It was something Ellis said that had triggered it. It seemed so long ago and yet it can't have been more than a month ago. When I was lying in the street, when I'd heard the voices hovering over me, a relief had been washed over me that I'd heard another woman's voice.
And yet, it had taken this long after Rochelle's death for it to dawn on me. I could very well be the last female left alive, the last woman in the country at least.
Now, for just once in my life, even wrapped up in the arms of Ellis, I had never felt more alone.