I sighed and turned away from the window, moving deeper into the building where most of my equipment was stored. I hardly ever needed to use my weapons, preferring not to venture outside until it became absolutely necessary, but I had attained quite a few, ranging from a shotgun all the way down to a splintered baseball bat. The bandages, antiseptic, and other various medicines were what I used the most. Sometimes a survivor would wander by my shelter and I would take him in, but of course, more often than not, that survivor had already been bitten and I would have to kill him. There had been a few people who I was really able to help. One was just a child, no more than eight years old. She told me about how sister and friends had died, every grisly detail, and I was surprised at how such a young mind could contain such horrific events.
Right now I was alone. The last person that I had helped left nearly a week ago. I try not to think about any of them, where they might have gone, what they might be doing, if they were even alive. But I wasn’t always able to keep my mind turned away, and their images would float in front of my eyes, demanding attention. Mostly that small girl who, though she was less than half my age, had seen just as many terrible things as I had. I had wanted to keep her with me, to protect her, but she had gone with the last wave of people that had wandered by.
I drew in a deep breath, the oxygen filling my lungs. I held it and squeezed my eyes shut, picturing the girl in my mind. Her name was Natalie. I remember thinking that that was strange because that had been my girlfriend’s name, but I hadn’t mentioned it. Bringing it up would have only brought on the unwanted questions about my girlfriend, where she was, why we weren’t together. And the answers I preferred not to answer. Natalie had been with me the day of the zombie outbreak, but I still hadn’t been able to save her. I hadn’t been able to save anyone.
I tried not to think about it, tried not to remember the pain in her eyes as the zombies devoured her, ripping the skin from her body with their teeth. But even if I was able to repress the images of her dying, it was the screams, the horrifying painful screams for help, that always came to me. But the worst thing about it was that I could have saved her, but hadn’t. I had run away. Just turned my back on her and took off. That was something that I could never forgive myself for.
So the child Natalie struck something in my heart that I had tried to keep buried, the part of me that was still able to feel for others. I didn’t want to, though. Feeling brought a need to help, and I wasn’t able to do that. If it came down to it, I would always save myself first, and caring about others made that decision all the more painful. But Natalie had unraveled my carefully woven façade of nonchalance. Her entrancing brown eyes had implored me, beseeching me to help her, to listen to her tragic story. I wasn’t able to refuse.
She told me how she and her sister had been at school at the time. Recess. A high chain-link fence surrounded the playground, and I believe that that was what saved the children from being killed, at least right away. The zombies were unable to open the gate that was meant to keep the elementary students from wandering away. The dead tried desperately to get inside, to embed their teeth into the flesh of the humans within. Fingers clawed furiously at the fence, teeth gnashing, angry growls reverberated through the air.
The children had been in a sense of panic, yet had known better not to approach the salivating adults that stood beyond the fence. They huddled in the middle of the playground, sobbing and moaning, a stressed and wide eyed high school student—Beka--that spent her free time helping the younger children, hovering nearby. Yes, they didn’t know quite what was going on, but an innate instinct within them told them that it was bad, told them to stay away.
Three hours they waited in the center of the fenced in area, too shocked and afraid to move or even to turn their minds over to planning. The zombies pressed in as close as they could get, fingers slipping in through the links as they sought ways to break through the obstacle in front of them. Beka was, of course, the first one to get a hold of herself, and pull her frazzled thoughts into a semblance of order. She led the sobbing, terrified children to a crawlspace underneath the school building, making sure that they were secured safely inside before leaving them.
Natalie didn’t know what ever happened to her. None of the children ever saw her again, but they did know that the pathway to escape was clear, the mob of zombies presumably having gone off after the single teenage girl. If she had indeed died, her sacrifice had saved the lives of many of the kids who were able to leave the playground and make their way across the deserted, body strewn schoolyard. They cried as some of the bodies lifted up, pulled their torn remains across the grass, seeking with grasping fingers for the warm flesh that they could smell, but not a single one was able to stand, the necessary body parts having been eaten during the first onslaught of the zombie attack.
A few of the children were grabbed by the prone zombies on the ground. They screamed in terror as they crashed to the ground, but their cries were soon swallowed up by the triumphant howls of the dead as the devoured as much of the small humans as they could, fighting amongst themselves occasionally to get the most.
Only thirteen—Natalie and her sister included--out of the original thirty-two children made it away from the school, and three of those had already been bitten, one on the hand and the other two on their legs. Many wanted to go to their homes, but Natalie who was able to understand to a much better degree about what was going on, said that it would be best not to, that they had to just get inside, away from the horror that had befallen the world.
By the time they made it to a large, empty church, there were only seven left, the three children that had been bitten having turned and taken out three more. The remaining kids huddled in a terrified group at the front of the sanctuary, nursing various wounds that they had obtained from stumbling and falling on the hard, unmerciful ground.
Maybe it was just luck or maybe it was God guarding the church that they occupied, but they realized that as long as they remained in the building the zombies never bother them. But as soon as someone set foot outside, which happened three days after the children had taken refuge inside the church when they were all parched and going mad from lack of water. A particularly rough boy who found pleasure in peeling the wings and legs off of insects was the first to venture out, deciding that he would have the best chance of finding water and bringing it back. He didn’t even make it to the street before the zombies were upon him, bent and rotting fingers raking across his flesh, seemingly razor sharp teeth puncturing his yielding body.
Natalie was the next to volunteer. Even though she was small for her age, she figured that her swiftness would make up for that. She almost didn’t make it either. Once getting outside, she moved in a zigzag formation, winding in and around the starving dead. She would have reached the street without a problem if it hadn’t been for the small, terrified shriek that sounded behind her. Turning around, she saw her five year old sister, tears in her eyes, hands reaching out toward Natalie, loathe to let her leave. A zombie reached out and snatched the girl’s arm. It all lasted only a few seconds before she was dead, her throat gushing blood.
Natalie was unable to move at first, too shocked and miserable to think beyond the fact that her only sibling lay dead on the ground, a few of the zombies pausing to gorge on her flesh, though most advanced on her, arms stretching hungrily toward the warm flesh in front of them. Natalie ran.
She never told me whether or not she thought the other children had survived, but I could tell that she was tormented by the fact that she had just ran off and abandoned them. I was able to relate to her in that sense, having done the same thing to my girlfriend, and I knew that it was best not to broach the subject, especially to an eight year old girl whose very innocence had been shattered the moment she turned around and started running.
In the end though, it hadn’t mattered. She had left me just like all the others had. Maybe they had sensed that I would give up on them at the first sign of trouble, that I would leave them just as I had done to the woman I claimed to love. I tried to push the dismal thoughts from the mind, but they were recalcitrant, forcing their way forward insistently.
I drew in a deep breath and reached forward, snatching up a meat cleaver that was permanently tinted red in places, the zombie blood being nearly impossible to clean off of anything. What I was planning was irrational at best, but I couldn’t seem to change my mind; it felt like something that I had to do. I had to redeem myself for my unforgivable crime. Maybe that was what Natalie had gone to do; maybe she had gone back to that church of children to rescue them from the zombie onslaught. I hoped that she had. I hoped that she would find relief from the guilt that plagued her.
I left the room and slowly made my way down the twisting and winding halls and out the front door, looking only once over my shoulder at the place that had been my home for close to three months. It was surprising how attached I had become to the place, but I knew that this might be the last time I would ever see it. I wasn’t sure if I would survive the rest of the day.
I turned my back on the building and walked down the street, heading in the direction of the busiest part of the city, where the zombies were most likely to be. I would kill as many was I could, hacking them to pieces with my knife, and then I would die. I was afraid, petrified even, but I knew that this was something that had to be done, to make up for everything else, to fix my mistakes.
I came upon the first of the dead only a few minutes later, their bodies hunched over, heads lowers as they tore hunks of flesh away from a body that I was barely even able to recognize as a human anymore. I closed my eyes briefly then opened them again, steeling myself against emotion and moving forward, my knife swinging down towards the zombies even before the thought to do so had even really crossed my mind. The blade buried itself in the first zombie’s skull, the sound of crunching bone filling the silence. The second zombie grabbed my arm as I yanked the knife free and shoved the tip through the creature’s eyes. It dropped to the ground. I stood there, breathing heavily, zombie blood splattered across the front of me.
I shook myself out of the trance I had fallen into and, after taking one look at the nearly fully consumed body, started my trek down the street again. There were more zombies—five total--in the next group that attacked, and all seemed more eager to devour me than the others had been. I took two out quickly, forcefully driving my knife through their skulls. The remaining three circled around me, moving closer and closer until there groping fingers reached me. I hacked off an arm, blood spurting up into my face. I squeezed my eyes shut in surprise, stumbling backwards into the arms of another zombie, but before it had a chance to bite me, I pulled free, spinning to ram the blade up through its chin.
Only two left, but oddly I already felt exhausted. I blame it on all the unwanted memories that had penetrated my carefully constructed mental walls; they head left me emotionally weak, my reflexes slower than usual. The two zombies flanked me, lips pulled backward into rotting, feral snarls. I wasn’t afraid. I knew that I should be, but the fear that I had expected to feel was buried to deeply inside of me for it to be invoked by a couple of the undead. In a way I wished that I could be afraid because it would make me feel more human, make my sins a bit less callous.
My knife sliced through the next zombie’s throat, its putrid blood spraying me full in the face, blinding me momentarily. I furiously scratched at my eyes, clearing them until I was able to see again. I pushed my knife further into the zombie’s neck until the head rolled backwards and dropped the ground, the body following close behind. The final zombie seemed to hesitate, its whole body shuddering momentarily as its eyes rolled about inside its head. One tense moment passed, and then the creature pressed forward, eager and hungry for the sustenance that my flesh offered. It never had a chance. My knife cut clean through its skull.
I stood there staring at the five mutilated corpses, feeling a cold satisfaction stir up inside of me. Strangely I felt more alive in that instant than I ever had before. I lifted a hand that trembled with exhilaration to my face, wiping as much of the warm, sticky blood from my eyes as I could, but some of it clung stubbornly to me, staining my eyelashes and eyelids a deep crimson color.
I drew in a deep breath. The exhaustion that had filled me before had been replaced with a rushing flood of adrenaline. I was unstoppable, invincible. I would kill every last single zombie that crossed my path. My blade would protect me, and if I lost it, I would use improvised weapons, stones, sticks, even my hands would work it I gave them enough strength. I smiled and tipped my head backwards to look up at the sky. Storm clouds moved above me, shifting and expanding, dark and eerie. I wondered briefly if rain would wash my strength away, if it would turn me back into the coward that had let his girlfriend die. I was afraid of that happening. I could face a thousand zombies and never feel a trace of fear, but at the idea of becoming weak, I was terrified.
I sighed and lowered my head, focusing on the towering buildings in the distance. It would only be another hour or so before I reached my destination. I started walking again. Determined and focused. I knew that a lot of zombies congregated in the larger cities, that being where most people generally sought shelter. The thought almost made me laugh. I didn’t understand how anyone could be so ignorant and naïve. They always flocked to the cities, like lambs to the slaughter. And they all died. Nearly every survivor that had ever passed by my home had told me of their plans to join some imagined zombie resistance in some city. I told them not to go, practically begged them to stay. None had listened, but all had promised to come back with others and give me news of their success. I never saw them again just as I had expected.
And now I was following the same path. The difference? I wasn’t expecting to find any living people. I was fully prepared for what could happen. Except for my lack of weapons. I hadn’t been thinking straight as I formulated my plan to annihilate all zombies, and as I thought about it now, I could not be blinded to the flawed logic in it. There were thousands of them and only one of me. How had I ever expected to be able to defeat them all? I was just like all those people that I had criticized for being ignorant. What I hypocrite I was. My motivations did not justify my stupidity. Not in the least. But it was too late to turn back now. I had to follow my plan to the end, no matter how gruesome it may turn out.
~
The rest of my journey passed without any problems, but then again I had never expected them to begin so soon. I knew that the real trouble would start inside of the city, where the zombie groups would be larger and hungrier, yet I still felt a subtle thrill flow through me that I had made it so far unscathed.
I walked down a deserted, bloodstained street. A horrible stench flooded over me and I reeled backwards in surprise, covering my nose and mouth with my hands. Before the zombie outbreak the only dead person I had ever seen was my grandmother. She had lain so still in the casket, eyes closed. I remember how everyone kept remarking that she looked so peaceful, like she was only slumbering and would wake any moment. I hadn’t seen it that way. To me she seemed to be in torment. Her body twisted into a position that suited those who lived. It was sick. Why not just let the body alone? Why play with it, why watch it? She was dead and nothing would change that.
Of course, I had been wrong. Something did change that. The infection that spread through the surrounding countries had reanimated her dead corpse and she had risen, ready to devour those who had so dotingly placed her to rest. It was ironic in a way, almost funny even, but overall terrifying and sick. To think that a woman who had loved everyone with her whole heart and would have never sought to harm a single person, to think that she would then after death kill hundreds of people, it was indeed ironic.
I was torn out of my reverie at the strangled half growling, half hissing noise nearby. I carefully surveyed the area, letting my eyes rest on every single nook and cranny that I could see. Finally, I found the zombie. A woman. She lay stretched out on the ground, the upper part of her body lifted upward as she eyed me with hunger. She stretched her hands forward and dug her fingers into the earth and then with painstaking effort began to pull herself across the ground. I had to watch her for a moment before determining that her spine had been broken thus rendering her incapable of walking, yet it did nothing to diminish the ever-present desire for human flesh.
I stepped forward and cut her head clean off her shoulders, watching as it dropped the ground with a sound that only rotting flesh could make. I grimaced and shook my head then moved away from the body, continuing my trek to the heart of the city. For the most part I saw no zombies, which unnerved me far much more than it would have if I had seen them crawling and limping towards me. Something was wrong.
The sound of shattering glass brought my attention to a nearby drugstore. I smiled to myself, happy to finally have something else to kill, to hack to pieces. I moved across the street and entered through the gaping hole where a door once had been. I moved carefully through the building keeping my eyes and ears open, ready, alert for anything.
A sharp intake of breath behind me. I whirled around, raising my knife, eager to—
Something slammed into the side of my head, knocking me to the ground, broken glass tearing into my skin. Through the haze that had been invoked do to the blow to my head, I heard a high pitched whining noise. I felt hands grab at my arms. I moaned, and tried to lift up my knife, but found that it was missing, my fingers gripping only air. The prodding touch of cold hands moved from my arms to my chest, than up my neck and to the side of my head where a flash of agonizing pain shot through me. I groaned again.
I didn’t understand why I wasn’t dead yet. After knocking me nearly unconscious, the zombie should have begun to gorge on my flesh, but I found myself still in one piece. I tried to open my eyes so that I could look for my lost weapon, but they felt heavy, as if they had been glued shut. That high pitched whining came again and then through the fog of my mind that noise became words, “…up. I said I was sorry. Please get up.”
Silence.
I finally forced my eyes open to the sight of a small dark haired girl who couldn’t be any older than the child Natalie. I looked at her in surprise then gingerly touched my wounded scalp.
“You hit me?”
Her face flushed red, and she nodded. “I thought you were one of them.”
I moaned. “Damn, you got one hell of an arm.”
Her face brightened with a grin. She lifted up a wooden bat, a likely suspect to the cause of my wounded head. “That’s what everyone says, ‘cept they don’t say bad words.”
“Bad…words?”
“Yeah, like the d-word and the h-word. You shouldn’t cuss.”
“God, don’t be ridiculous—“
“And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. It isn’t proper, and God might strike you dead for being so foolish.”
I forced myself into a sitting position and glared at the girl. “All right. Whatever. I won’t swear any more. Damn—I mean, jeez.”
She grinned again, her smile so intoxicating that I found myself grinning right along with her, even as my head began to throb with each beat of pain that pulsed through me. It was irrational to feel happy in the situation I was in, yet I couldn’t help it. The child just seemed so carefree and joyful, as if she had never witnesses any loss or pain in her entire life. It seemed as if for her the zombie apocalypse had never occurred.
“Are you going to come?” she asked, cheeks dimpling.
I looked up at her, confused. “Come where?”
“To the Haven.”
“Haven?” The word sparked a memory within me. An old gentleman who had repeatedly told me of a place in a nearby city that housed many survivors. He had told me how he planned to go there and make himself useful, how he would work to rid the world of the zombie infection. He had told me a name. Haven.
The girl was nodding her head, coal black curls bouncing up and down. “It’s a safe place. There are hundreds of people and they all work together to achieve one goal. To kill all the dead people.”
I frowned. Could I really have been wrong? To think that all those people had actually gone a way to a real place and I had laughed at them. Called them fools. Criticized them. How could I have been so completely wrong? I closed my eyes and let my head rest in my hands. “I can’t go there.”
“Of course you can!” Her voice was high pitched and cheery, the tone of someone who was use to always being right and getting her way, someone who had never endured true hardship before. “Everyone can come. Marcus holds no prejudices against anyone. I’ll bring you there. All you have to do is agree to join the cause and not bring trouble.”
I peeked out between my fingers to see her smiling that infectious grin again, but this time my mood did not lift. Yes, it sounded great to be able to group up with more people. It would be safer. But I couldn’t bring myself to face those people that I had practically told would die, saying that there was nothing for them to go to, that the city would bring only despair. What would they think of me? And even if this Marcus accepted me, I doubted that they would. People were generally loathe to forgive.
I moved my hands away from my face and slowly got to my feet. The girl’s eyes followed my every movement, and her innocent expression tore at my soul. But I couldn’t go with her. I had to go my own way. Even besides the fact that I refused to face those people, I couldn’t accept help from anyone in my mission to redeem myself. That was cheating.
“I can’t,” I said, keeping my voice firm.
Her smile faltered. “I won’t hit you again.”
I shook my head. “It has nothing to do with you, kid. I just can’t.”
I walked past her and headed towards the door. She remained standing where she was, but her voice followed after me. “It’s dangerous out there, Cameron. It’s not safe to be alone.”
I froze in my tracks and turned around to face her. “What—how did you know my name?”
She shrugged her shoulders and scuffed the toe of her shoe across the trash littered floor. “You don’t know me.”
I scowled at her. “Of course, I don’t know you, and that is exactly why you should not know—.”
“I know you.” Her eyes slowly rose to meet mine and what I saw there was like a blow to my stomach. I felt my eyes widen and my breath hitch in my throat. I don’t know how I could have missed it before, but somehow…maybe because of my wounded head, maybe because I had just been too preoccupied with my pathetic plan, maybe— Those eyes. They were the last things that I had seen before slipping over into the brink of insanity. Those eyes which had watched me with a heart wrenching sense of betrayal and pain as the zombies tore into yielding flesh. Those eyes. Her eyes.
“N-n-natalie?”
She shook her head. “No. Gabrielle, her sister.”
I took a step backwards. “Natalie told me that you—her sister had died during the first wave of the infection.” I narrowed my eyes. “Liar. You’re lying.”
“It’s true, Cameron. I almost died. I would have died, but Marcus has an antivirus. He can save everyone just like he saved me. Please, Cameron, you have to listen to me before it’s too late. Whatever you’re planning is foolish. You cannot take all of the zombies on by yourself; it’s a suicide mission. Please, just listen to me.” Her eyes bored into me, imploring, begging. Natalie’s eyes. Oh God, I couldn’t stand this. “If you would just—.”
“No!” I screamed and threw myself at the girl. My body hit hers and knocked her to the floor where she gave a startled cry of pain. Fear filled her gold-flecked eyes as I snatched the bat from her hands and raised it above my head.
“Liar!” I cried and swung the bat down. It clipped the side of her head and slammed into her shoulder where the blessed sound of crunching bones filled the air. She screamed and cowered away from me. Her eyes—Natalie’s eyes—so wide that it didn’t seem possible that they could fit on her face.
“Cameron, wait—.”
I swung again, hitting her jaw. Blood flew from her mouth and splattered against the floor and my pants legs. I raised the bat again, lifting it high above my head to give me as much strength as was possible. Gabrielle tried to scoot away, but I was faster than her. The bat cracked down on the crown of her head, the wood splintering with the impact. At first I was startled by the fact that her head could have broken the bat, but when I looked at her—
I covered my mouth with my hand, feeling my stomach twist with disgust. I had broken right through her skull and blood ran down her face, staining the floor and pooling around my feet and her body. I let the broken bat slip from my fingers and fall to the floor beside Gabrielle.
“Help me…”
Oh God, she wasn’t dead. How was that possible? I had broken right through her skull and still she was alive and with the ability to speak. I stared wide eyed at her, her pleas for help filling the air like an endless chant. Yet her lips weren’t moving. Her eyes stared straight at me, accusingly. I was going crazy. She was dead; she had to be. I sank down next to her and her eyes followed me, another desperate cry for help slipping out of her unmoving lips.
“No,” I moaned. “Leave me alone. Stop looking at me. Stop looking at me!”
I reached forward and slammed my fist into her face, bones snapping, but still she remained staring at me with those cold, lifeless eyes. Natalie’s eyes. I moved trembling fingers across Gabrielle’s face until they reached her eyes. I couldn’t look at them any longer; I didn’t want to see the accusation there. I couldn’t stand it. I dug my fingers in, inching past the whites till they were underneath. I closed my eyes and my breath came out in strangled gasps as I yanked forward.
When I looked again. Gabrielle lay there with empty sockets where her eyes had once been. I climbed shakily to my feet, trembling from head to toe. I felt sick. Physically and mentally. I moved away from the body, keeping myself from looking. I couldn’t face what I had just done. I stumbled outside and right into somebody.
I was shoved backwards against the wall of the drugstore. A man stood in front of me, tall and looming over me. His hair was light and his eyes dark. He slapped my face and it took me a moment to realize that he was trying to speak to me. I could see his lips moving but I could hear no sound. My ears—I reached my hands up, carefully prodding my ears to find them filled with blood. I looked down at my body, which was also covered with the same scarlet liquid.
I wiped at my ears furiously until words reached me. “—say something. Have you been bitten? Are you all right, boy?”
“F-fine,” I said, staring at him. “Who are you?”
“Marcus…”
The rest of the words faded away, and I suddenly found myself laughing hysterically. Here was the man that Gabrielle had seemed to so revere. The man that had supposedly found a cure for the zombie infection. Oh, how beautiful.
He slapped me again and again until I quieted down.
“I’m looking for a girl,” he said, eyes hard and cold. “Dark hair, light brown eyes. She’s only ten, and she—.”
“There.” I pointed into the blackness of the building.
He nodded his head at me and a slight smile crossed his face. “Thank you.”
Once he had moved away from me and entered the drugstore, I started to walk. I had moved barely a few feet though when the man’s screams reached me. I felt the corners of my lips twist up into a cold smile. The man may be able to cure someone from becoming the living dead, but he couldn’t cure death. He was a failure. They were all failures.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I attempted to turn around but didn’t have time before Marcus yanked me towards him. His eyes were wild and livid with anger, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I felt cold all over, as if I was slowly wasting away.
“You killed her,” the man snarled shaking me. “You monster! She was just a little girl!”
“Her eyes,” I said, my words coming out on little gasps. “Her eyes. Her eyes. Her eyes.”
He shook me again. “She was a child!” I saw his eyes fill with tears, but that did nothing to diminish the fury there.
“Her eyes,” I moaned.
He threw me to the ground and drew out a gun. I stared at it in confusion, unable to wrap my mind around what it could mean. All I could think about was the sudden weakness of my body and the cold that seemed to slowly be wrapping around me, choking me, suffocating me, killing me. Blood from the wound on the side of my head dropped to the dirt and I blinked in surprise at its dark crimson color, the color that only zombie’s possessed.
“Damn it,” I said as I remembered the zombie blood splattering across my face and into my eyes. Getting blood or saliva in the eyes was not always fatal if it was washed out soon enough, but if left to spread throughout the body, well then it was just the same as being bitten. Stupid of me for overlooking that.
I climbed to my feet, Marcus’s gun following my movement. He didn’t seem very willing to pull the trigger, probably loathe to actually kill another human. But I had no qualms. My hand shot forward and grabbed the gun, shoving it off to the side. I threw myself at him, arms linking around his neck, my mouth going instantly for his throat. I bit down as hard as I could, warm blood spurting out to fill my mouth. He screamed and clawed at me, finally managing to throw me to the ground. The gun swiveled back in my direction.
I stared up at him and smiled, smug satisfaction staining my expression. It didn’t matter if he killed be because I was already going to die. He was actually doing me a favor, though he couldn’t know that. But the best part of it all was that he would die too, and maybe it would be too late before anyone noticed. Maybe the entire Haven would die. I closed my eyes and heard the gun fire.
