One

Mom says that first part was pretty messy, and that I should start at the beginning and keep my thoughts organized. Nobody likes a critic.

My name is Kara Clarkson. I live in the only human compound I know of. Fifty or so giant metal containers form the wall of our compound, with the open back against the big lake. Mom says the containers used to be driven all over the country on trucks with 18 wheels, and that the lake is called Lake Michigan. Mom knows a lot about things.

She should, though. My mom, Sarah Hartman, grew up in the place called Indiana, which apparently includes where we are now. Her father was the Reverend Jonathan Hartman, and he worked in a big building called a church where he talked to lots of people once a week. Mom and her brother and sisters grew up in what she calls a small town, where they went to a school made out of bricks and played video games in the basement of their house. When they all had time, the Reverend would take Mom and her brother and sisters out to a field where they learned to shoot, which I guess was really good for Mom. After things started to go bad in the cities, people wanted to move to the small town and listen to the Reverend, which I guess was really not good for Mom. It wasn’t long before things started to go bad there, too. One of Mom’s sisters went bad in the middle of school one day, and Mom had to shoot her that afternoon in self defense. Not long after, the rest of Mom’s family went bad. She survived by high-tailing it out here, to where our compound is now. She said it used to be called the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

My dad, Jeffrey Clarkson, grew up in the place called Ohio, which apparently was right next door to Indiana. I was too young to ever hear any of his stories from him. Dad never talked to Mom about his life before things went bad. But, as I said, they fell in love and made me. And that suits me just fine.

After Dad was gone things weren’t much different than before he was gone. Things were actually pretty much the same for a long time. People from the compound would leave in groups to hunt the creatures, trap animals for food, and raid the places humans used to live. The groups would bring back all sorts of useful things, but what counts as ‘useful’ sort of depends on who you are. Mom got banned from going out to forage because she would bring back things like books and paper and pencils, stuff that was bulky and heavy and nobody could eat it or wear it. But she’s convinced that learning is useful. She set up what she called a school for me and the few other kids in the compound, but I gather that it wasn’t much like the school she went to when she was a kid. For one thing, we didn’t have our own building or desks, so we would just sit on the floor of Mom’s container while she talked. We didn’t have textbooks; we had to share the few books Mom had by taking turns of who was reading what. And we didn’t meet regularly �" Mom usually called us to school when things were going bad outside the walls. She used the books as a way to help us keep our minds off the fear.

I told Mom I would rather be out on the walls helping than stuck inside ‘school’ when things were going bad, but she told me that was no place for kids because it was dangerous. We were sitting on the floor one bad day while Mom was talking about Fahrenheit 451 when Joe Carver slouched into the doorway. Joe, one of the single men in the compound, always slouched, so that wasn’t unusual. But I saw right away that his eyes were bad. He moved up behind Mom with his mouth already open, so I jumped up and beat him over the head with Moby Dick until he was just a mound on the floor. Mom turned around in time to watch him fall. Her eyes went real wide, and she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Okay Kara, next time you can help.” That’s when I knew things were going to get better.

Helping the defensive positions was definitely better than sitting in ‘school’ trying not to be afraid. I didn’t get to do any real fighting, but at least I was doing something to keep us safe. On days when they came to the walls, I would run cups of water to people on the walls. I also ran rocks and arrows and grenades and clips sometimes, but the adults didn’t like asking me to carry the dangerous stuff.

All except Mister Brady, that is. Mister Brady was basically the only old person who made it to our compound. He spoke with a kind, soft voice and told us he came here from someplace really far away called Tennessee. Mister Brady had stayed in Tennessee trying to help other people until things went from bad to really, truly bad. Then he got in his car and drove north until he ran out of gas. He said after that he just walked the rest of the way here, figuring he would find people in the north and trusting to luck. When he got to the walls of the compound, the men inside didn’t trust that he wasn’t bad. They asked him all sorts of questions about who he was and where he had come from, and even after all that proving that he wasn’t bad they still didn’t trust that he was good. They made him strip down to his silky brown birthday suit and throw all of his stuff up to them to search. Only after they were real and truly certain did they let Mister Brady join the compound, and then weren’t they glad. Mister Brady had been a paramedic when he was much younger, so he knew how to patch people up when they got sick or hurt. Too bad he couldn’t do anything when people went bad, though. Anyway, I guess he helped Mom give birth to me, and that’s not even the reason I liked him the most! Mister Brady was my favorite because he always asked me to bring him stones for his slingshot, and when I had brought them he would have me sit and listen to his stories while he sent rocks soaring gracefully out into the creatures’ skulls.

Mister Brady taught me how to swim, too. The only way into or out of the compound is the lake, since the compound walls are solid metal. The founders built it that way because the things either can’t or won’t swim in water, although I guess they’ll wade if the water is shallow enough. Mom didn’t really want me to learn to swim, since the adults had agreed that outside was too dangerous for us kids, but Mister Brady knew I could handle myself. He would take me along when he went outside every so often to gather more stones and other useful bits. We never went very far from the compound, and only ever during daylight, but still it was so exciting I could hardly keep from jumping for joy. We were out one day like that when we found some of them. They were a ways off from us, just sort of standing listlessly in a group. Mister Brady sucked in his breath real sudden and told me in a whisper that I had better move like the wind until I was back inside the walls. I started walking backwards to keep my eye on Mister Brady. He stood stock still, just waiting to see what they would do, probably hoping they didn’t see or hear or smell. But nobody really ever thinks that will happen. Sure enough, they started coming toward him with those long, stiff strides, and he pulled his slingshot out of his belt without moving his head. As he let the first stone loose, I turned around and ran. I ran like I had never had the chance to run before. If I hadn’t been so scared, I guess it would have felt good, almost like I was flying, the way my feet hardly touched the ground. I splashed into the lake without ever looking back, swimming and gasping until my knees were in the sand on the inside of the walls. I laid face-down on the lake side of the dunes until my breathing was mostly back to normal. Then I waited a little longer, and then a little longer yet. Eventually I realized it was over, and I went back to Mom’s container and curled up in a ball on the floor.

Mom told me she went out and buried what was left of Mr. Brady herself. I guess they were so hungry they didn’t leave enough of him to go bad.

After that I certainly wasn’t allowed to go outside any more, but pretty soon nobody was going outside. That day was basically the last normal day we had. The days got longer and harder as more and more of them came. It was never really overwhelming, like the night my dad went bad, but they were just so consistent. A group of four or five would show up, the adults on the wall would mow them down, and we’d hope it was over. But no more than 10-20 minutes later, another group would appear from a different direction. They can’t really think �" or so we hope �" but it sure as shooting felt like a siege. The more days it went on, the larger the groups and the shorter the gaps of time between. The adults started to get nervous. What if they ran out of ammunition? What if the bodies piled up against the walls before we had time to move them?

By the time they were coming in a steady flow, I decided I had to say something. Jane Southerfield is the closest thing we have to a leader or mayor or whatever. She was up on the center wall, lining up shots with her compound bow, when I got up the guts to tell her my idea. “Kara, honey, I understand that you’re trying to help, but we just can’t do that.”

I was really surprised. It seemed like such a simple thing, not like we didn’t have the materials. I granted her that it might be a bit dangerous, but anything must be better than having a staircase of bodies for them to climb into the compound.

“Yes, I know, but it’s not right. You know that we bury every one that we kill. It’s the only decent thing to do. They used to be people, remember. We can’t just burn all those bodies like a bunch of savages.”

I asked Mom to explain savages to me while I stewed about what Jane said. Mom told me that savages used to be one of the Reverend’s favorite subjects. She said he’d go on and on about how everyone has to act like ladies and gentlemen, respecting one another’s property and wishes. Apparently he had a very long list of things that were right and things that were wrong, and it was all inspired by a big book that he read to them every night. Mom didn’t forage that book. She said she figured thoughts like that didn’t fit in a world where things that used to be people ate things that were still trying to be people.

I reasoned that, too. If what Jane was talking about was an idea from back before the Reverend and most other people went bad, then it probably didn’t apply to us. But how could I convince her?

Turned out I didn’t have to, because fear is our prime motivator. Before too much longer, other people in the compound, adults whose opinions actually mattered, started to say that we had better do something about the bodies before the situation got any worse. Jane couldn’t argue with that big chorus of fear. And the best part was, she let me get things started while the adults kept shooting.

We have a large metal drum full of tar for fixing holes in the containers to keep them waterproof and windproof in the winter. I knew it was precious stuff, but I also knew it would do the trick. I scooped up a bucketful of the bitter stuff and ran up onto the top of the walls with it, careful not to spill or I’d be stuck where I stood. I dripped the tar real slow and gentle onto the tops of as many of the things as I could before I ran out. Part of me really wanted to use a second bucket’s worth, but we can’t chance wasting any resources the way we are. So I satisfied myself with grabbing a bunch of kindling. I held the end of each stick in the flame of a torch for a second until it was surely lit, then tossed each of them over the side onto the pile. Some caught right away on the dry rags of cloth on them, but others smoldered and went out because the flesh was too wet. I whooped as the fire started to catch, but the smoke was something truly awful.

Charles DuBois, one of our scientists, yelled for everyone to tie damp clothes over our faces to protect our mouths and noses from the smoke. My cloth sure didn’t help with the smell of all that burning, but it did ease the sting to my nose and lungs.

The best part about the fire I built wasn’t even that it got rid of the pile of bodies. The flames got to be where they were hot enough to keep the things well back from the wall. That was good, because the adults could shoot them at a distance, letting the bodies fall away from the wall. Still, they kept on coming like we were all standing on the grass basting ourselves in honey and bacon grease, just asking them to do us in. It seemed like they would never stop. I wondered if my little world would soon be covered in them, burying us and everything I’d ever known.

But The End has finally come, or so we hope. For six nights and seven days they came, we shot, they fell, and more crawled over them. The adults slept in shifts and worried that we would run out of things to throw at them. But it seems like it might be over now. We haven't seen any of them moving around our compound in four days. Jane says tomorrow she'll take a group outside to forage for more supplies and take stock of the situation. Nobody wants to say it out loud, but maybe there aren't any more.

Reviews

[Zoë]

I have a few critiques,
- "Mom knows a lot about things." This sentence seems kinda forced, it doesn't flow as well as a lot of your others, which makes it hard to read. I would suggest changing it to "Mom knows about a lot of things." or just shortening it to "Mom knows a lot."
- "After Dad was gone things weren’t much different than before he was gone." This is repetitive, it would flow better without the "he was gone" on the end.
- "They asked him all sorts of questions about who he was and where he had come from, and even after all that proving that he wasn’t bad they still didn’t trust that he was good." This sentence is also a little hard to read and a little repetitive. I think it'd read better if it was just "They asked him all sorts of questions about who he was and where he had come from, but, even after all that, they still didn’t trust him."
- I'm curious about how old Kara is because she (you) only uses the word "bad" to describe the zombies. Now, if this is how people are constantly going to be refereed to when they get infected (?) then it's fine, but if not, it makes Kara seem a little childish.
- Also, I'm a bit confused as to how long the Apocalypse has been going on, but I'm assuming it's been for 20+ years. You might want to make it clearer how long ago this all started.

Other than those few nit-picky things, it was fantastic. I'm really liking the story and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops.

[DaughterNature]

Thanks! Yeah, the timeline is something I'm working on, but it's definitely been more than 20 years since things were "normal." As far as the "bad" thing goes, that's actually how I want to play it - the word "zombie" feels so overused that I wanted to try something different. But I agree that it does sound a little childish. I guess maybe I'm using "bad" and not explaining exactly how it started because this story isn't really about the undead, but about how the people who lived through the apocalypse are going to deal with it being over.

[Zoë]

I don't think you really need to explain it unless you want to. Since "zombies" are something that most people know about it's pretty easy to figure out what "bad" is referencing to. Although I would suggest switching up the word every now and again, since it does sound a bit childish and after a while it's just overused.

[DaughterNature]

That's fair

[Einstein Noodle]

i like Kara! i like her plucky attitude .. she's a corker :)
i like the introduction to a few more characters ..i like that you keep that short and sweet ..surprised me with the consumption of poor Mr. Brady :( i like him right away and was hoping he would be around a bit longer .. closing re-sets the hook for me ..i think you are doing a bang up job with this Daughter! i will do my best t stay tuned :)
E.

[DaughterNature]

You're too kind, really! I know, poor Mr. Brady - I liked him, too, probably because I based him on some people in my life. But the idea of death and loss and moving on is important, and I like the idea of shocking readers with loss.

[Einstein Noodle]

yes ... i agree ... death, dying and loss are topics we should all be comfortable with .. we than come to terms .. and if choosing faith and trust .. the rest of our days can be lived more fully says i! here we are having a serious discussion sparked by zombies ;))))

[DaughterNature]

Why not? Why can't zombies, death, disease, and destruction spark serious thoughts? That's kind of my point with this story - people always focus on the apocalypse happening, but I want to wonder about how people would be afterwards.

[Einstein Noodle]

yep! i think your on to something dear Nature Girl ;)