The School Bus

A novella with humor, friendship, and a bit of violence, set in a post-zombie-apocalypse world. A group of seven teenagers are given the task of retrieving a possible vaccine from an infested city.

CHAPTER 1 - NO BACON, MORE EXERCISE

The CDC and all the rest of those fellows tried their damnedest, I suppose, but it was over before it started. The second that first virus mutated inside a plump, pink, piggy host, nature ripped the break out of the car and set it rolling. The vegetarians had it best, but once the virus really took hold of humans, they were taken too. Then it was mostly the very lucky or the very fast that had a chance.

Eliza Cummings was both. She never talked about what happened before we’d met, but I’d gathered that her continued existence was not just due to her freakish speed and devious mind. In the land of Baconless, you have to be sharper than everyone else to avoid getting cut, and Eliza could play life like chess. She could out-wit the zombies in her sleep, although in fairness their brains were filled with mold.

Me? I guess I was luckier than anything. I could do my fair share of shoving doors open and carrying things, but I was not as adept at decommissioning zombies as Eliza, and I was certainly not as fast a runner. A few miles and I was sweating like crazy. Before the Bite struck, I was tall and big-boned, with the weight to prove it. Once my a*s was chased across half the continent… I still pretty much looked the same. I mean, I had gotten faster, but it didn’t particularly appear that way. So on the check list for “useful weight-loss programs,” go ahead and cross off “zombie apocalypse.”

Case and point, today I was sent to get water and had to high tail it from a few Z’s. I had my .45 handgun at my hip, but I preferred not to use it. Sure, it meant a few less zombies wandering the streets, but I could just envision myself trapped in some alleyway with no Eliza, no Christopher, and no bullets. Anyway, I was sprinting away from the town’s reservoir, the weight of the water carrier dragging at my shoulders, and there were four and a half reanimated corpses galloping after me, screeching for my sweet, fatty flesh. It was a mile back through the vacant town to the chain-link perimeter of our shelter, and I was pouring sweat the whole way because it was June in North Carolina and the air was half water. I came up on the fence shouting at Christopher, who was perched on the roof of the bank, his pale limbs hidden under a red umbrella.

            “Christopher! Christopher, you lazy idiot, shoot them!” I screamed, decaying fingers swiping at my back. “Christopher!!!”

            Five shots whistled past my head, five thumps sounded behind me. I slowed to a walk, heart pounding. Christopher appeared at the edge of the roof and grinned cockily down at me. “I swear, Chris,” I panted, leaning against the fence, “I’m gonna punch those zits right off your smug face if you do that one more time.” He chuckled and leaned easily on his rifle.

            “Whatever, Aaron, I had you covered and you know it.” He smiled peacefully. “Look at ‘em. Just as dead as they should be.” My fingers rattled the chain-link as I spun to look at the bodies.

            They were sprawled across each other, stiller than the day they died. They didn’t look particularly peaceful; with their pale flesh half separated from their bones and their tattered Bacon Times clothes, they just looked like cadavers that a drunken med student had lost. Especially the one that was missing half of its torso.

            “Hey, Aaron, you made it,” said a soft Hispanic voice behind me.

I turned to find Vicente unbolting the gate. “Yeah. The little nerd cut it close at the end there, but it wasn’t too bad.”

Vicente tapped the gun at my hip with a fingertip. “You know, you have this thing for a reason, hermano.” He pulled the gate close behind me as I stepped onto safe ground.

            “I’d rather have the bullets for an emergency.” I slapped the buckle around my waist and slid the plastic drum off my back. Vicente whistled and Christopher appeared again, rubbing sunscreen on his arms.

            “Come on down and help me haul this, Chris. Aaron deserves a break.”   

            Christopher climbed clumsily down the fire escape, wiping his hands on his Call of Duty t-shirt as he strode over to us. He had found the shirt in the trash and treated it like crap, but it was still pretty much the only thing he wore. Once a week I cajoled him into a Minecraft shirt with a green cube monster on it so that Arianna could wash the poor thing.

            Christopher attempted to wipe sunscreen onto my arm, but I dodged his hand and took a few steps towards the building. “Thanks, guys,” I called as they hefted the water carrier and started to lug it to the back, where Bryn had set up our water filtration pump. Vicente nodded with a smile as I turned and headed to the front entrance.           

            The bank wasn’t that big, but it was very posh. I thought the interior decorator must have been aiming for “understated overstatement,” because it was all sterile hallways and white columns. But it had been Bryn’ turn to pick where we set up our base, and she found the juxtaposition to the wild grime of Baconless funny. When she had spotted the building three days ago, she had looked sideways at me with her playful blue eyes and winked. “We can be millionaires, Aaron. Pay the zombies to f**k off.”

            When I reached the atrium of the building, I turned left and headed to the office that I had set up as my room. The label on the door said “Gene Poole,” and even though it was the biggest office, Eliza had let me have it because it made me chuckle. Inside the room, like the rest of the bank, it was all of ten degrees cooler than outside. Even though I knew I’d be sweating again in seconds, I went to my milk jug of water and poured out a cup. I splashed it over my head and shoulders, rubbing it under my arms and then toweling off with an old rag. I had a mirror in my office, though I hadn’t put it there (the idea of Gene Poole staring at himself when no one was around was almost too much) and as I passed by I found that my brown hair was now spiked up like an electrocuted Pomeranian’s. I didn’t bother to flatten it. The mirror also revealed that my run this morning had done nothing for my figure. All those shirts lied- zombies aren’t good enough motivators for exercise. Maybe a T-Rex apocalypse would do it, though.

 

CHAPTER 2 - THE BOSS

I headed to what had once been the main vault but had now become Eliza Cumming’s room. When I opened the door, I found that the walls of little brass lock boxes were being consumed by taped-up papers. The floor was littered with a grid of books and documents, aligned along some indiscernible system that appeared as the debris of a paper bomb, but to Eliza was calculated order.

Eliza, dressed in her usual blue tank top and cargo shorts, was sitting cross-legged in the eye of the storm, a thick book open in her lap. I picked my way to her and stood a few feet away. “I got the water. Christopher took down five Z’s. They’re outside the gate.”

Her eyes flickered upwards and met mine. “Oh, Aaron, you’re back. Hi.”

I smiled. “Hi. Did you hear me?”

She shook her head apologetically and held out her hand. I took it and pulled her to her feet, taking the book from her hands and setting it aside. “Water’s here. Five zombies down, courtesy of Christopher.”

She nodded and walked to the corner, where her bedroll was unfurled on top of the desk. When I had first met her, I had been afraid that she would roll off her bed at night, because she always slept up high on ledges; countertops, desks, tables, but she slept like the dead. Well, the Bacon Times dead.

She poured a cup of water from her milk jug and took a long draught. “Were they close?” she asked, pulling herself backwards onto her bed.

“Nah. Anyway, I had my gun.”

“Little good that does you if you won’t use it,” she said, not accusingly.

“I would have, but I was fine.” I gestured to the floor. “What’s all this?”

 I was expecting her to say it was just for fun, but she rubbed a hand across her face and said quietly, “They think they found it.”

It was only a pronoun, but I knew immediately, instinctually, what it meant. Shock hit me like wall of bricks. “No way. No way.” I stepped toward her in excitement. “How…how sure are they?”

She twisted her fingers together in her lap. “Ninety-one point seven percent.”

My fists were curled so tight that they were in danger of becoming black holes. “And you think it’s possible,” I said breathlessly.

Eliza nodded. Her face was somber for some reason, but I could see the fire in her green eyes and my excitement solidified into hope as she said, “I’ve been reading up on microbiology and immunology and, based on the little information they sent, I think that the chance may be even better than they say.”

“That’s a real, fighting chance at a vaccine!” I hollered. “Eliza, it could change everything. No more worrying about bites, more people could leave settlements… everyone would be so much less afraid!”

But Eliza only shook her head. “They can still eat you. Over one third of the deaths are caused by that.”

I began to get frustrated and reached out my hands as if to shake her shoulders. “Come on! How many people have turned because of a little nibble? How many families have watched their loved ones taken by the fever, by a fate worse than death?” I stepped closer to her so that she had to look at me, trying to get her out of her inexplicable reluctance. “Why do you think so many of the people left are the immune ones?”

She sighed, as if my exuberance was painful for her. “Aaron… I recognize that it’s important, but we would have to retrieve it.”

“Retrieve it? You mean it already exists somewhere?” I was almost screaming.

“Yes, but that’s the problem. It’s not… that easy.”

“How hard could it be? That’s this team’s job; we retrieve stuff.” But now I recognized the tightness across her shoulders, her tangled fingers. My stomach slumped. “Where is it?” I asked with reluctance.

“It’s in Helmond.” Her brow crinkled in a rare show of apology.

Damn. Well, so much for that. “Oh. That makes it a little harder, huh.” I got no answer. Eliza had folded her arms over her lowered head, her long, dark hair fallen across her face. My stomach twisted again. “You okay?” I asked. That was her difficult-decision position.

Her reply was mumbled. “What if we… could do it? What if I thought I could get us in and out of the city?”

            The sentence settled on me. “Then I would shout ‘hell yes,’ sprint out of the room, and mobilize the team.”

She looked up, smirking. “No you wouldn’t.”

“I would,” I assured her, and she slipped off her table-nest like a cat.

“Aaron,” she said, “They could die. You could die. Helmond is a death trap.”

“No, it’s an un-death trap. They’re just zombies. True, there are like, thousands of them, but…” I shrugged. “I trust everyone in this team with my life. A vaccine, El. How many tragedies would that prevent? Whatever the risk, whatever the price… we have to try to get it if there’s even a sliver of hope that we could. ”

She was silent then, and I watched as the marbles of her thoughts tumbled in her mind. I knew what she was going to do, because she had been waiting here for me to convince her of it. So when she raised her face to mine and said, “Yes, we do,” I was ready.

 “Oh, hell yes!” I tore out of the room, my heart racing, pounding, roaring.

 

 

CHAPTER 3 - CHAMBERS OF THE HEART

My first destination was the cafeteria; there was always someone there. I burst through the double doors like an action hero. Three guns came up and trained themselves at my chest. “Wait, wait!” I squealed, my action hero image evaporating quite swiftly.

Bryn, Vicente, and Christopher lowered their weapons. “Sorry, Aaron,” Vicente said, returning to his Styrofoam plate of peaches. Christopher grinned wryly and set his rifle down lovingly against the back of his chair. A comic book was open on the table in front of him. Bryn, across from him, reached over and flipped it closed as he looked down at it.

“Hey, Aaron came in like a crazy person for a reason,” she said.

Chris looked up at me with a quick tilt of his head. “Oh, sorry. What’s up?”

Vicente raised his head to listen, and they all looked at me expectantly.

“There’s a meeting in five minutes in the atrium,” I said, and then, before they could ask, added, “Sorry, I can’t say what it’s for.”

“Aw, come on, really? Tell us!” Chris pleaded, jumping to his feet.

 I could feel the adrenaline in my limbs like a million mosquitos, but I shook my head calmly. “No, wait ‘till we’re together. It’s important, though, I promise.” Vicente reached over and pulled the other boy down by his sleeve. Chris scowled impishly at him but stayed seated.

“Okay, five minutes,” I repeated. As I turned to go, Bryn extracted her long limbs from her chair and bounded to my side, catching my arm in her slim fingers.

            “How important?” she asked quietly, and I met her eyes. I didn’t mean to show anything, but her cheeks rose in a subtly devilish manner, and I got the feeling that my beautiful face had betrayed me. She released my arm and gave me a wink. “That is important,” she whispered, and whirled away.

 

I had to find Arianna next, and whoever had brought Eliza the message. Presumably they were together, since Arianna loved visitors. I raced through the pretentious hallways, peering into our bedrooms and supply rooms. Smashing against the back door, I peered out through the dusty window. There they were, sitting at the picnic table against the fence. I tore the door open and strode towards them. “Arianna!” I said. She was perched on the blue metal table in the shade of a sun-bleached umbrella, talking to a boy on the seat in front of her.

“Ciao, Aaron. What’s up?” she said as she looked up from her conversation. The boy turned around when she spoke, and I recognized him at once.

“Lewis!” I cried, pulling him to his feet and into a hug, being gentle; he was so small that I was always afraid of breaking him.

He wrapped his arms around me and patted my back, and when I let him go he was beaming. “Hiya, Aaron.” He straightened his glasses across his freckled nose. “Good to see you.”

“You too. What the hell are you doing here, by the way?” Lewis hated action. He was like the opposite of Chris. But the settlement was fifty miles away through unprotected land. It was hard to imagine the five-foot twig of a kid having any urge to drive a car through it alone.

“I volunteered to bring a message to Eliza.”

“Thanks. But why would you do that?”

Arianna caught my eye and shook her head, but it was too late.  Lewis pushed his glasses hard against the crown of his nose and said, “My dad went out to get some herbs… and, and he didn’t, um.” He swallowed and looked sideways. “He was bitten. Eight days ago.”  His mien changed, hardened, as he looked up at me. “They needed someone to bring you guys a message, and I had nowhere else to be. So.” He coughed, clearing un-cried tears from his throat.

I didn’t know what to do, so I feebly patted him on the shoulder. I had been with people who had lost friends and family to zombies. But sorrow goes through the souls of people like light through prisms and comes out different each time. So I just tightened my fingers against his thin shoulder for a moment and hoped it helped.

            “I… I want to stay here. With you guys,” he said, giving me a smile like a gift.

Arianna raised her chin in defiance of my surprised silence. “I said we’d love to have him. He gets on well with us.”

I ran my hand through my hair. “Lewis… do you know what the message you were carrying was?” He shook his head. “Well, there’s a meeting in the atrium. You can decide if you want to stay after that, and if you do, we can ask Eliza, alright?”

“Alright. Thank you.”

            “Am I coming?” Arianna asked.

“Yeah, the whole team. Come on.”

Arianna leapt off the table and together we headed in out of the heat into the slightly less heat.

 

Although, in my excitement, I had forgotten to tell Eliza just where I was going to assemble the team, she was standing in the little atrium with everyone else. They were all silent, leaned against their own side of the octagonal room. Arianna, Lewis, and I took up our own facets as Eliza stepped into the center.

“Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming.” For most people, this would have been sarcasm; it wasn’t like we had been off doing something important, but Eliza was being sincere. We nodded solemnly, accepting the free gratitude. “Lewis Atkinson arrived an hour ago, as you know.” She smiled gently at Lewis, who dipped his head shyly. “He brought a message from Compromise Settlement. It’s very serious, and we need to decide the next course of action. Don’t worry; there’s no imminent danger.”

            There was a moment of silence, like the strike of adrenaline before a glass plunges off a table’s edge. Eliza turned in a slow circle and took her team in one by one. Then she drew a short, audible breath and said, “They’ve located a manufactured vaccine.”

            Noise exploded into the atrium; whoops and gasps reverberated off the walls. Our careful polygon shattered; Arianna and Bryn hugged, Christopher pounced on Vicente and got his hair ruffled. Lewis’s eyes were so wide I was afraid they’d burst. As Vicente pulled Arianna under his arm, I began to smile uncontrollably. An echo of my smile flitted across Eliza’s face, and she let us have a minute before calling order. “Hey, calm down. Shush, quiet.” The group reformed around her, closer now. “It’s not that easy.”

“Aw, hell, in Baconless it never is,” crowed Chris. “We can handle it.”

Eliza shook her head. “Let me explain, Christopher, and then you can decide that.

‘Seven days ago, a zombie arrived outside of the Compromise Settlement. He was in stabilized decay state and probably two or so months old. His clothes, or what was left of them, were regulation CDC. When the snipers took him down, they waited 24 hours and then retrieved his possessions, per regulation. He had papers in his pockets; miraculously, they had survived his journey. They were scientific notes, mostly. Though they were nearly illegible from ink bleeding, they managed to discern that it was the formula and process for growing a docile form of the Bite and manufacturing a vaccine.” As she spoke, her hands never tugged at the hem of her shirt or touched her hair, but moved about her, painting the strokes of her speech. “From what they could read, it was extremely viable. Upwards of ninety-one percent. They sent me all of the information that they copied down, and I agree. It’s almost eloquently simple, but…” she met my eyes. “I think it could be the answer.’

‘The notes also contained the address of the zombie’s place of work. He was a head laboratory assistant at the CDC headquarters in Helmond.”

The word echoed awkwardly, painfully, about the room and left a stinging silence in its wake.

            “I know the city is completely overrun with Z’s, and attempting to break into the building is, needless to say, risky. But the venture may- may- be worth it. The assistant’s papers almost assuredly implied that the main scientist there had time to prepare for the Bite wave and stock-piled considerable gear. He actually succeeded in producing the vaccine.”

            Arianna raised her hand, which made Eliza smile. “Yes, Arianna?”

            The young Italian girl’s voice was mellifluous in the vibrating atmosphere. “Why was the assistant a zombie? I mean, he shouldn’t have been, ‘cuz he was in the building.”

            “There’s no way to know, and that’s certainly one of the variables to consider. In fact, I’m assuming that the lab was overrun-” there was a collective sigh, “-but that the vaccine is still intact. And even if it isn’t, that’s where the rest of the notes are, at least.” Eliza smiled her brave smile, and I felt the tug on my lips. “They need us to go. Obviously, Compromise hasn’t found any other settlements, yet, so we are the most qualified to get this done. And if we get the vaccine, they could finally increase the effort to find other people and other communities. They don’t want to tell the people yet, until they know for sure that we will retrieve it. So now we need to decide if we want to do this.”

There was a new kind of silence when she finished, a contemplative one. Chris broke it first, with relish. “Well, I’m game as hell.”

            Bryn nodded in agreement. “Me, too. This could change everything.” At their words, I felt a sudden and unexpected vice tighten about my heart, as if a tiny army was staging a two-pronged assault in my chest.

            Beside me, Lewis cleared his throat. “May I go, too?”

            “Of course, Lewis,” Eliza replied, glancing at me. I couldn’t hold her eyes, and looked away.

            “I think I’m up for it,” said Vicente softly.

Arianna, her shoulders tight, said, “Yeah, I’ll do it, too.”

            Damn, they were all looking at me now. Six pairs of expectant eyes, but I’d had an untimely crisis. They were my team, my friends, and this was Helmond, the twisted soul of Baconless itself. Normally, I trusted everyone here to survive whatever they faced. But suddenly I was terrified they’d all just democratically consented to death.

            “Aaron.” Eliza’s eyes searched my panicked ones like a surgeon’s blade deep in a body. She took a step toward me.  “Are you coming?” I couldn’t speak, couldn’t answer, and then she said gently, “I want you to.” And the blade turned and nicked whatever artery carried my courage.

            A deep assurance flooded through me and I grinned, laughed. “Of course. Let’s go get that vaccine.”

So we were going. I saw the resolve in their eyes, felt it clearly as, as one, we squared our shoulders and lifted our chins. Eliza called us together and we stepped the final bit forward, so that the space between us vanished and our shoulders touched like a pewee soccer team. Eliza was beside me now, and whispered. “On three.”

“One… two… three.”

The roar that filled the bank’s atrium had no real words, save Chris’s “No prisoners!”, but that was okay because the opposing team didn’t speak English. The message was on terms that the brainless could understand; You’d better run, because the zombie slayers are coming.

 

CHAPTER 4 - ON THE ROAD AGAIN

            Back before the Bite, I used to think that taking an Algebra test was the most cruelly difficult task ever devised by human kind. But now, in a world razed by disease and desolate of bacon, I could safely say that that was not true.

            Setting up our outer fence was harder than even the most vicious math tests. You know those days you spend with your family camping, and in the evening you all have to set up the tent, only it’s getting dark and you’re all coming off a marshmallow high and the poles just won’t fit? It was kinda like that, but there were 64 metal poles and countless square footage of eight foot tall chain-link, and the dark brought flesh-craving zombies. It pained me that the whole frustrating thing was created by the normally considerate Vicente. Setting it up required six people, a gas-powered industrial drill, and a flatbed truck. Much of the physical labor fell to me, while the others took the burden of logistics and fending off zombies. Taking down the Great Wall, as Bryn had christened the fence, was faster but only marginally less stressful. The poles had to be pulled out of their temporary holes and rolled up into the Ford. It had to be done simultaneously, because it was all one piece of fencing so as to be safer. In the summer, the task was exponentially harder because the heat made everyone grumpy and tired. And of course, we had to work as fast as possible, because with the fence down we were as exposed as bacon in a thunderstorm. We moved half a dozen times or more on each of our multi-week trips. And every time we moved, we performed this whole excruciating process for each new building.

            Just over a year ago, Eliza and I were the only people younger than 25 on the Compromise supply team. Eliza was still the leader, because it had been her idea to search the world for supplies to sustain the settlement. I was mostly there because she had asked me and I didn’t like staying cooped up in the settlement- not because I had anything to offer. There were five other people. The Bite had struck a year before then, and some of the adults were still bitter and touchy. I mean, Eliza and I were too, but, goodness, we could still handle supply runs.

With the old team, we originally had rudimentary security measures that mostly consisted of guns, but after we lost Jimmy Powell, a fifty- something year old who used to be a carpenter and took care of shelter and defense, Eliza decided we needed something that would be a bit more simple and complete. Jimmy had been dragged out of a back window which we had forgotten to fortify. Granted, he was firing his gun out of it and shouting into the night, but one man’s recklessness should not be able to put everyone else in danger. According to Eliza, anyway.

            So we recruited Vicente Santos, a gifted 19-year-old who had worked with his family in construction. He went on one mission with us and after laughing at our patchwork system until he cried, designed and built the fence, a fortified, portable perimeter for the buildings we commandeered. The first time we tried to set it up, it took so long that we had a full swarm of Zombies on us before we were close to done. We kept them off; the adults may have been full of themselves, but they sure could shoot. No one was bitten or eaten, and for the rest of the trip we enjoyed the benefits of a yard around our house and a defense system that could be easily maintained with patrols. When the team took it down, it was heavy and ungainly and took so much thinking and shouting that we fought nearly the whole time. To top it all off, no one would listen to an 18 year old girl, so coordination was impossible. When we got back to Compromise, Eliza dismissed everyone from the team, even me.

            Then, after fighting the settlement leaders to maintain ownership of the retrieval team, she asked for volunteers for the new group. You had to be 19 or younger. If you had a family, they had to approve. I signed up, as did Vicente. So did twenty-something other kids. The youngest was thirteen.

            We went on a few short mock trips to test out their resolve and skills. Eliza accepted me as part of the team after the first run. Vicente, too. A few kids went absolutely berserkers when it came to the fence. I actually had to sit on top of one of them until she calmed down.

            Eliza and I picked out the top ten and went on a real, multi-week supply trip. It was late spring then, and we drove two states over through the budding world to a super mall for clothing and food. The trip was rife with zombies, risks, and rewards. A few of the kids couldn’t take it: the long hours driving, the hard work, the nights within earshot of the undead. Some of them just weren’t that helpful or cooperative. Or likable. We stayed most of the time in a house in the suburb beside the mall, the fence up the whole time. When it came time to take it down, it went pretty smoothly. Young people were more respectful of Eliza and passionate where adults had been despondent.

 A few weeks later, when we went out again, the people who Eliza and I liked and who actually wanted to stick with it were the only ones left. There were five of us, then; Eliza, me, Bryn, Vicente, and Christopher. Within a month, the fence dissembling was as painless as possible; still like ripping a Band-Aid off, but at least a damp one.

 

Today, everyone was so excited and/or nervous that it went a little less smoothly. I was nearly crushed twice by chain-link because Christopher, crouched in the Ford’s flatbed, kept throwing his hands in the air and shouting something about Call of Duty. But eventually, we hit the road and left the bank behind. Helmond was three days away, barring unexpected road blocks. Somehow that seemed like both an eternity and a terrifyingly small amount of time, but there was no point in thinking about it just yet.

Vicente and Lewis were in the Ford, the Great Wall rattling in the back. They were blasting a new CD they had found in one of the offices. Some sort of death metal. It’s like Zombies’ least favorite genre of heavy rock! Sorry. Actually, zombies can’t even hear. It’s like the one good thing about them. They can smell freakishly well, like blood(hungry)hounds, and see, too, but they are incapable of appreciating the finer auditory things. Like death metal.

            Everyone else was in the bus, which I was driving, because I’m a boss. Not the boss, just a kind of boss who’s super cool, and also knows how to drive buses. Eliza was sitting on the floor beside me; head leaned back against the console. Bryn, Arianna, and Lewis were lounging in the back, tossing a little rubber ball back and forth. It could have been a fairly normal scene from a Bacon Times school bus, except past the first three rows, all the seats had been ripped out to make space for our traveling supplies and whatever crap we gathered. Right now it was mostly empty, since we had only been away from Compromise for a short while. Also bucking the school bus look was the fact that all the windows were boarded up, with just a few slender gaps for blades or binoculars.

            The air in the bus was sweltering at first, but it slowly cooled off as the air conditioner spat its meager stream of cold air. When the road was fairly smooth, I could hear the faint clashing of music from the truck ahead, so I made up lyrics to lay over the screams. I hummed them in a gentle, nursery-rhyme manner, tapping my fingers on the wheel.

            “Oh, here come the zombies, baby, to eat you up,

            ‘cuz you’re so sweet, baby, like honey,

            And the zombies they love you like I do,

            And they want to eat you up…”

“Aaron, if you keep singing, I will shoot you.” Eliza interrupted, passing a hand over her eyes. “God, you even used a pun,” she moaned, the corners of her mouth rising.

“What can I say? I’m just that talented. Why else would you keep me around?” I pulled the bus into an awkward arc as we headed down the ramp onto the highway.

“Besides the puns, you mean? You know, I couldn’t say.” She made a soft sound that I knew to be her laugh. “When we stop, ask V what the song is actually about. I bet you aren’t far off. I mean, it is death metal.”

            “Zombie’s least favorite genre of…”

            “I will shoot you.”

I laughed. The bus was roaring along now at a blinding forty miles an hour. I kept the slow pace because you never knew what was over the next hill, and I didn’t fancy crashing our lovely bus. Also, the vehicle itself couldn’t pull off much more than that anyway. The truck, which could actually go faster than a turtle, had pulled ahead a bit so that they could scout the way, but Vicente knew to keep it slow.

            “Yo, Aaron!” Bryn called from the back.

            “Yeah?” I glanced in the rearview. “What’s up?”

            “I need to pee. And Lewis said there’s a town ten minutes ahead with a medical supply warehouse. He wants to stop, grab some s**t.”

            Lewis corrected her with a pained grimace. “Actually, it’s more like advanced antibiotics, acetaminophens, and very important bandages, but yeah, I’d like to stop.” He tapped his glasses and added meekly, “Also I need to pee, too.”

            I looked down at Eliza, who nodded in affirmation. “Alright,” I said. “Ari, you want to do the honors?”

“Oh! Yeah.” She climbed over Bryn and stumbled happily to the front. Eliza pulled a megaphone from under the console and handed it up to her. Sliding into the seat behind me, Arianna undid the latches which held a corrugated metal cover over the window. Swinging it open, she stuck her head clean out and put the megaphone to her lips.

“Hey! V! Can you hear me?” There was a pause after the crackling call, and then a thumbs-up appeared out of the driver’s window of the truck. “Alright. We’re gonna stop at a town ten minutes ahead. Let us in front in a few, ‘kay?” The thumbs-up wagged up and down and then retreated into the truck.

            “Thanks, Ari,” Eliza said as the girl, hair rather disheveled, handed her back the megaphone. “Hey, Lewis, could you come tell Aaron where to go?”

            “Sure. Right now?”

            “How far away is the exit?”

            “Well, it’s exit 81, and I just saw 72, so, soon.”

            “Yeah, come on up and we’ll keep an eye out for it.”

He came to stand beside me, elbow resting on the top of my boss throne. Eliza rose to her feet and together they stared out the chicken wired-window, picking out the exit signs as they crawled by. Some of the little white signs were peppered with bullet holes or unreadable under a layer of innards, so they kept count from the ones still intact.

“Okay, it’s the next one,” Lewis said after a while. By now Vicente had pulled the truck behind us. The girls were crouched in the way back, cackling as they harassed Christopher through the window.

 I turned the bus up the exit ramp and slowed down. “Which way?” I asked.

“Right, and then go on for a few miles.”

“How do you know, Lewis?” Eliza asked, her head swinging gently as she surveyed the passing fast-food restaurants and derelict stores. We had not been in this sector before and I knew she was longing to check the buildings for supplies.

“Um, well, I looked over the maps for medical hotspots before we left the bank. I thought the supplies may, um… come in handy later.”

“Good thinking,” Eliza said, and Lewis accepted the praise with a timid smile. “Aaron, don’t get too close.” I nodded in affirmation. Hotspots, especially fortifiable ones like warehouses, could often harbor humans along with the usual party mix of zombies and supplies.

 Lewis guided me down a few decaying side roads and then we were shrouded in the sudden green shade of forest. “This is the back entrance,” he explained. “The building’s just through the trees. Quarter mile.”

I slowed to a full stop and the truck pulled alongside. We all climbed out of our vehicles and gathered between them, the radiating engines canceling out whatever slight coolness the shadows offered.

Eliza brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and grinned an infectious grin at us before beginning her speech. “Alright, team, this is an in-and-out operation. Its purpose is to get whatever we may need for the operation in Helmond, plus supplies for Compromise. Since the purpose is to keep us healthy later I want minimum injuries now. Avoid all unnecessary risks. That means no plunging into a room full of Z’s for a bottle of Tums, got it, Christopher?” We all chuckled and Chris saluted with half-seriousness. “We’ve done this before. You all know your jobs. Keep an eye on each other. And remember, Lewis is with us, so make sure he’s safe.” We murmured our assurances, and I shook Lewis’ shoulder gently. “Lewis, are you good?” Eliza asked, capturing his gaze with her fierce green eyes.

“Yeah. I’m good,” he said, and I heard that iron note that betrayed Lewis’ inside self.

“Great. Suit up. We move out in five.”

 

“Suiting up” mostly involved strapping on various weapons. Everyone had at least one gun and a close-combat weapon; crowbars, machetes, axes. I had my red fire ax and .45, Vicente his shotgun and homemade mace. On top of his ice pick, Christopher had three guns, all of which he had painted a Pokémon onto. Also included in our swag were backpacks, or, in my case, a hiking pack. The bags were for gathering supplies, but most of us had useful things tucked away in them, too. The final flourish to our gear was the brain child of Eliza and the product of Bryn and Lewis’s hard work in the Compromise lab. Since zombies were attuned to the smell of humans, they had made a perfume that covered it up. I don’t know how it worked, but it was down-right ingenious, and only smelled faintly of gardenias.

We sprayed each other down from head to toe and then moved out down the road, side by side. Eliza was in the middle, flanked by me and Christopher. Lewis was on my other side, and then Bryn. Vicente took the far side, Arianna between him and Chris.

            We came out from the trees into the scalding sun and the building reared its ugly face before us. It was a two-story warehouse, sun-bleached and crumbling; in the center of a wide asphalt lot littered with white semis and marked off by a tall, barbed-wire fence. The fence was so battered and rusted that Vicente had no need of his wire cutters. He and Christopher just pulled aside a frayed section and we all filed through the jagged gap.

We advanced in a line through the parking lot, Christopher in front darting from truck to truck to clear the way. He fired once or twice, decommissioning a few wandering zombies before they even got a squeak out.

As the building drew closer, I could see the hand of chaos on it; the scars of weather and apocalypse breaking its once-clean contour. Eliza glanced back at me and shook her head once. She thought I had a better grasp of her nuanced glances than I actually did, but this time I knew what it meant. There were no people here, at least not permanently. The place was just too full of holes.

But in Baconless, it was best to assume that every wall concealed a grouchy dragon, so that when it was just zombies or people, you were over-prepared. Accordingly, we cautiously skirted the building until we found a metal, garage-style door. It was wide enough that we would not be bottlenecked as we entered, but it presented the problem of being electronically secured. Eliza spread us out behind the cover of the nearby trucks, our weapons trained on the potential floodgate of horrors. Then Bryn strode forward with her shotgun slung across her back.  She dug through her pack of tools as she went, trusting that we would take care of any danger that approached. There was control panel next to the door and she removed its face with her screwdriver and leaned over it, her long fingers rewriting its innards. There was no power grid, so the controls required outside energy to work. Bryn had somehow created a method for providing bursts of energy for such situations. She had explained it to me- something about magnetism, or chemistry- but honestly all I had really absorbed was the fact that she had named the little black device the Open Sesame Seed. I’m not so apt at electromagnetism, but puns stick with me.

It took our electrician less than two minutes to coax a satisfying crack from the door’s locking mechanism. It was accompanied by a muffled curse as a shower of sparks leapt from the panel. As the metal door rattled open, Bryn pressed herself against the wall, sucking on her hand. Murkiness inside the maw. Nothing moved. Bryn shrugged at Eliza, asking for orders.

            “Chris, keep me covered,” Eliza said quietly, and crept around me, gun held deceptively loosely in her fingers. She walked forward into the open space between shelter and danger, the waiting paths of our bullets laid around her. I knew that there was no one inside, and the new light would have summoned any nearby zombies. But still, my fingers tightened against my pistol as she approached the door.

            Stopping a few feet away, she shouted quite loudly, “Hello!” and waited. “If anyone is here, we mean no harm. We are coming in for supplies but will leave if you come forth and ask.” More waiting, more silence. Eliza raised her hand and summoned us forward with a flick of her wrist. I fell in by her side as we passed into the shade of the warehouse.

            My eyes adjusted quickly, and I took in a cavernous room, its cement floor covered with crates, shelves, and old wooden pallets, some still upright but most shattered and disturbed. By the door was an over-turned forklift. Its broad blades were laden with the rotten bodies of decommissioned zombies, and in the chair the scene that would never cease to pierce my heart; a human splayed in the carelessness of death. The carcass had been ravaged by zombies and was just a stained skeleton now. I looked away quickly and made felt the rest of the team do the same.

            We started down an aisle, which was blocked halfway down by a tumble of boxes. We moved forward in a sort of phalanx, with Christopher in at point. He had the greatest tendency to shoot first and never ask questions, so that was the best place for him. Also, though I would never say this aloud, he was absurdly brave.

            But you had to watch your a*s, too, so I was in the rear. That tended to be where the people attacked from, if they had no urge to negotiate. I had punched my fair share of humans intent on shivving me. But today, there was no danger of that, as the poor body confirmed.

As we went, Bryn, Eliza, and Vicente read out labels on boxes and bottles, enunciating incredibly stupid words with ease. It was like being escorted by the head council of Geekdom- or more likely their bodyguards on the way to throw me out of the palace. Occasionally, Lewis would call out and we would stop and load up on little glass bottles. We were taking as much as we could, but had to prioritize since we still hoped to find really useful things like bandages and antiseptic. Most of the stuff in this aisle was for surgeries or rare conditions, according to Lewis.

Eliza carved open a plastic tub with her hunting knife and then rotated out to let Vicente kneel down and gently scoop out the drugs. Suddenly, Chris yelled out, “Zombies!” and fired off a shot. I spun around to watch a zombie slump against the blockade of collapsed boxes, his brain splattered behind him like a Jackson Pollock painting.

His herd began to stumble around the blockage, their screeches starting up like an off-tune string band. A familiar buzz warmed my limbs and I grabbed Lewis by the collar and shoved him behind me. I’d seen him shoot, and well, he was f*****g bad.

Chris fired off two more bullets and the recipients collapsed onto their ravaged faces. The blockage was only twenty feet away, and by the cries, there were at least ten zombies back there, stuck between the loaded shelves and the boxes. They couldn’t see us or smell us very well, but they could smell their dead brethren. And only yummy humans slay zombies.

There was a gap between the collapse and the wall of the where they came flooding through; they would come around the corner, spot us, and break into their shambling, deceptively fast run. The phalanx had tightened and retreated a little, Bryn and Eliza joining in the decommissioning. Vicente, as he always did when the danger meter cranked up, drew close to Arianna. She was a fair shot and getting better, but Vicente stayed nearby nonetheless.

I watched my teammates as they called out tersely to each other, staggering their reloading and claiming targets. Eliza’s shoulders moved like the peaks of a tiger’s back. My gun was in my hand, cocked, but I wouldn’t have to use it. Sure, this was a lot of zombies, but the bottleneck made it safe enough. Shots rang out like roars.

            I glanced over my shoulder at Lewis, and found his expressive eyes calm. He looked up at me for a moment. “Damn,” he mouthed appreciatively, and I smiled.

            The zombies stopped coming after a few minutes, and we waited in the silence, listening. Eliza looked back at me and I gave her thumbs up. She turned around without responding, but she had seen. She holstered her gun. Her team was safe, all the way to the back, where I stood proudly.

            We moved on, cautiously at first, and then with growing comfort as each new row yielded only a few lone zombies. We filled our packs, and even found a box of bandages, a little crate of painkillers, and six bottles of antiseptic. These supplies tended to be more picked over than the unpronounceable drugs, for obvious reasons, but the previous waves of scavengers had been slackers and deeply inefficient. Well, we can’t all be bosses.

CHP 5 - BOILED BRAINS

Back on the road again, Bryn, Lewis, and Christopher looked over the supplies we had gotten. Arianna was riding with Vicente because, a) Chris likes to catalogue crap, b) trips are less boring if we rotate seating charts, c) Arianna likes to take naps after raids and d) for some reason, looking at stuff you just collected requires a lot of noise.

            Eliza was on her blanket at the front with me, watching the kids in the back with hooded eyes. I had a CD playing, though I could barely hear it over Lewis insisting that the bottles be in a straight line and Bryn’s purposeful butchering of the labels. The road curved lazily ahead like a hung-over snake searching for the toilet. The truck followed the thin path cleared by our predecessors between abandoned cars, and I guided the bus along behind.

            “Isn’t it weird to think, if the world got really cold suddenly, then daffodils would go extinct simply because they would never wake up for spring?” Eliza asked after half an hour of silence.

            I smiled. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever thinked that, El, but it’s not too weird. If I didn’t have an alarm, I might just die from not waking up.”

“You don’t have an alarm,” she said matter-of-factly. “I just wake you up.”

“Well, there you go. I keep you around as an alarm clock and a super-random, slightly-morbid idea generator, and you keep me around for puns.”        

            She laughed her humming laugh and then patted her stomach. “Are you hungry?”

            “You asking me, or your tummy?” I asked. She gave me a withering look, so I just rubbed my own belly to see how I felt. Eliza always asked me about meal times because she could go so long without food, whereas I could very much so not. “Um… I can go another thirty minutes. You said there’s a model town coming up ‘bout then, right?”

            “Yeah. We’ll just stop for the night. It’s getting dark anyways.”

“Alright,” I said, suddenly eager for the upcoming respite. To avoid counting the seconds, I let my mind wander a little, but the stupid thing just wandered to memories of past meals. Oh well, might as well indulge in a little brain food.

 

In the early days we ate a steadily soul-sucking diet of canned food, mostly whatever we picked up on our runs. Just popped a can open and shoveled it out and straight into our mouths. Don’t get me wrong, I loved canned food, but it got boring. I mean, we didn’t even warm it up. Not sure why.

            And then one day, about ten days out from Compromise on a supply run, we were clearing out a small neighborhood when a little girl ran out from one of the houses. Christopher nearly shot her, because she didn’t stop when Eliza shouted her customary greeting/warning. She just sprinted right onto our bus like she was about to be late for school.

            Bryn was the first on after her, her weapon holstered. I was at the rear of the bus, loading supplies up through the back door. Eliza had been standing in the yard, and Christopher was with Vicente, who was just coming out of a house after a final sweep. They all sprinted towards the door of the bus. I, slightly panicked as I imagined a feral child tearing out Bryn’s throat, clambered into the bus through the back and lunged to the front, only to stopped mid-stride by a punch to my shin from Bryn. She was crouched on the floor in the center of the aisle, talking to the girl curled in the seat before her. Bryn shook her head, quieting me. I made sure the new girl looked mostly sane before stepping around Bryn to calm the others as they thundered onto the bus.

            “She’s alright. Hold on a bit,” I said quietly, and Eliza told Christopher to take up his sniper post on the ceiling. He nodded and climbed nimbly onto a seat to balance on the high, thin back. He twisted the handle of the escape hatch in the ceiling and, with practiced skill, hauled himself through the little door and onto the roof. The rest of us stood watchfully as the Bryn-stranger conversation developed.

            “That’s a good name, Arianna. Now, those are just my friends. We work together getting food and other useful stuff. Do you have any friends?”

            The reply came in a melodious accent and a wavering voice. “No, no friends. I am alone.” The sentence was spoken like the greatest tragedy the world could bestow, and I believed her deeply and at once.

            “I’m sorry.” Bryn said, and went on tenderly. “Just now, were you running from something?”

            “No, ma’am. I wanted to come with you. I thought you were leaving.”

            “Oh, darling! We’ve actually got a few houses left to search. And you really oughtn’t run at people with guns.”

            “Oh,” and the syllable was short and soft in her mouth, “Scusate. You looked nice, though.” We all smiled. I liked her very much already. And even better, I could place her accent now, thanks to her apology. She was Italian.

            Eliza talked with her a while after that, and then we kept her with us on the trip back to Compromise. By the time we got back, she had decided to become part of our team. She was only twelve, but we let her stay because she really wanted to, though I couldn’t understand why at the time. Also, because she was a bitchin’ chef.

            That first night she watched us open our cans and had a small meltdown that involved a lot of Italian curse words and foot stamping. She nearly smacked them out of our hands, and then burrowed through our supplies and, within a half an hour, using only our campfire by way of cooking, made a small miracle in the form of lasagna. It turned out that she had had a huge family, all consummate food admirers, and she thusly had a disproportional skill at cooking for her age. She had been separated from her family for a month now. She didn’t say much about it, only that she had no way of finding them and she wasn’t sure if they were alive or not. But she seemed to believe that they were and carried that consolation close to her heart.

Over the next ten days she proved her resourcefulness and aptitude for making the delicious from the disgusting. She was great company when she was happy and the trip became noticeably lighter. Unfortunately, when tired, Arianna shed her down timidity and became rather prickly. She couldn’t shoot and, in a crisis, tended to curl into a ball and whimper. Eliza didn’t like this particular tendency in a potential team member, but the betterment of our diets began to work away at her disapproval. After the first few days of staying tucked in the bus, Arianna followed Vicente on raids, carrying what she could despite her shivering hands. This, I think, is what convinced Eliza to let her stay when Arianna asked. Although it could have been the lasagna.

There was something else though, something I remember as vividly as the first bite of one of her cooked meals. We were nearly back to Compromise, and she had asked the day before if she could become a team member and was awaiting an answer. We were all in a living room just before bedtime when she turned her lamp-lit eyes on Christopher and said, “That shirt is disgusting.” Chris looked down at his chest, stunned, fingering the grimy fabric as if seeing it for the first time.

“Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t wash it much,” he said feebly.

“Why not? Don’t you do laundry?” It was an accusation aimed at all of us.

“Sorta. We rub our clothes in rivers when we see ‘em. Chris uses, like, every other river.” I said, and she turned on me, face glowing with something besides the lamp.

“I could do it. Your laundry, I mean. Because you all look like rag-a-muffins.” She leaned forward onto her hands and knees, and we watched her, enthralled. “I’ll do laundry, and cook, and help carry stuff, and shoot zombies, if you let me come with you on trips. And I’ll be brave and strong, like you guys. ” She was looking right at Eliza, then.

And Eliza said, “Yes. You will.”

That night, Arianna asked Vicente for a story. None of us had known he had that gift, but Ari had somehow figured it out. We all sat around him as he spoke, wrapped in our blankets and his deep, lilting voice, just listening until we drifted into sleep.

When I awoke in the morning, I found that Arianna had fallen asleep right next to Vicente, her head nuzzled like a kitten’s under his arm.

 

Ah, model towns. Thou art the boon of the fair world. May your radiated grass and creepy plastic families forever prosper.

            The fake town we found tonight was a single asphalt road, ending in a cul-de-sac with a cheery little tree in the center. We found a nice, eggshell blue townhouse and parked the bus outside it in the waning light. Eliza pulled out the megaphone and called for any humans to make themselves known. When she got no reply, we checked the vicinity for zombies, and, finding none, headed into the house.

            I walked with Christopher through the upstairs rooms, prodding loose doors open with my ax and scouring the gloom for danger. There was nothing except signs of a few long-gone squatters; trash, decaying zombies, old fireplaces on the bedroom floor. There were still-clean blankets on the bed, only slightly moth eaten, and we gathered these up and went back downstairs.

            “Clear?” Eliza asked as we came into the kitchen.

            “Yeah, boss. All clear,” Chris replied. “Hey, Ari, where you want these, kid?” Arianna exclaimed happily as we held up the blankets and motioned for us to put them in the living room. Once I had dropped off my load, I went back to the kitchen, where Vicente was sitting at the table with Eliza.

            “What’d you need?” she asked him as I pulled up a chair.

            “Well, Bryn’s in there helping Ari with dinner like you asked, but I think it would actually be best to sleep upstairs tonight. I can put up a few warning bells on the windows, but it’d be easiest to just blockade the stairs. The floor plan’s a bit open and there are just too many damn entry points.”

            “Alright, Aaron and I can take the windows. You get started on your barricade.”

            “Sure.” Vicente stood. “I need Chris, if you can…”

            Eliza waved him out. “Yeah, I’ll get him. Go on, get started. We need to get our sleep.” She strode to the opening of the living room. “Christopher, get up. Vicente is making a barricade on the stairs. Bryn, you guys go on upstairs.” There was a tumble of moaning. “I know, I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t have started yet anyway. And Chris… get up now before I come in there.”

            Chris bolted from the room like a flash of pimpled lightning and headed outside to help Vicente carry in supplies. I smiled at Eliza as she came back to the table. “What lazy b******s,” I said solemnly, lounging my head back against the chair. Eliza kicked me in the calve. I yelped and she shook her head coldly. “Don’t be a hypocrite.”

            “I wasn’t,” I complained, rubbing my leg. “I was being a smart a*s.”

            “Well, I suppose I can’t stop that, then.” She turned her head to me for just a moment, and her eyes softened into dark playfulness. “It’s inherent in you.” I couldn’t help but smile proudly at the high, if unintended, compliment.

            Bryn, Lewis, and Arianna passed by, draped with blankets and arms full of cooking supplies, and climbed the stairs. Soon after, Vicente and Chris came back in with their own loads and gave us what we needed.

Ah, dark. Even the immortal and immaculate model towns cannot stand up to your encroaching concealment. In the pitch of night, the zombies came alive, figuratively speaking, screeching like drunken, lonely coyotes seeking respite from the solitude. Unfortunately, zombies were best isolated. Grouping, as they tended to do at night, created a bit of a hassle. No one was sure exactly why the Z’s loved the dark so much. They couldn’t see very well in it, though they could still smell. Maybe it was just because they were b******s and liked the element of horror that darkness inevitably adds. Oh don’t worry, son, there’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light. Yeah, mom, but now I can’t see it and also it’s in a freaking hunting pack, so give that damn nightlight back.

            Inkiness seeped into the windows as we set up the defenses. We nailed up frames of metal bars across the biggest windows and strung strings of bells across the doors and littler windows. Christmas bells may not seem like much of an alarm, but everyone on the team was trained like dogs to awaken to their tinkling. There’s nothing like waking up to the sweet jingling of a zombie herd come to eat your flesh.

As we worked our way around the perimeter of the house, skirting oak tables tastefully decorated with plastic fruit, Eliza talked to herself. It was her way of computing, and many glorious ideas were born from it. I used to think that I was meant to listen to and understand the possessed ramblings. And so, initially, I tried. But almost immediately, I succumbed to the weight of my vast ignorance. Now, I just let the sound wash over me like lute music from an ivory tower, far, far over my head.

            When we were done, we headed upstairs, squeezing through the half- finished barricade across the mouth of the stairwell. Beyond, there was a small landing and a little hallway with access to three white doors. Well, two were white. One was covered with brains, and was thusly more of a dull purple. We went into the room beside it and found Bryn and Lewis crouched beside our stove, watching with longing looks as Arianna stirred dinner. I squatted beside Bryn and peered into the pot. “Watcha making, Ari?” I asked.

            “I’m not telling. If you have expectations, you can be let down. And I just don’t have enough spices to make it properly,” she sighed and then slapped away my approaching fingers. As she clicked her tongue and watched with satisfaction as I rubbed my hand, Bryn reached around her and dipped a spoon into the bubbling mix. By the time Ari turned back to stir her creation, Bryn had licked it clean. She grinned at me. “Minestrone,” she mouthed. Lewis watched the whole transaction with wide eyes and an unconscious smile.

            Eliza had discovered a sturdy desk over in the corner and was perched self-satisfactorily upon it. “What happened to the zombies that were in here?” she asked. No one had told her that there had been leftovers of decommissioning, so she must have gathered it Holmes-style.

            “Oh, um…” Lewis turned his head away from our clever tricks for moment. “We tossed them out the window.”

            “Oh.” Eliza leaned forward and peered out the grimy glass. “Well done.”

            “They were cramping Lewis’ style,” Bryn explained as she crawled to where we had all stacked our packs. She flipped them open with practiced ease, and seven mismatched bowls were soon lined up by the little stove, awaiting the highlight of their day.

            “Aaron, Bryn, go see if V needs any help, okay?” Eliza said.

            “Nah, it’s alright, boss,” Chris said as he came in, wiping sweat off his pock-marked forehead with his shirt. “We’re all done.” He patted Ari on the head and smiled charmingly as he crouched down. “You look lovely in this light, Arianna.”

            “You can’t have the first bowl, if that’s what you want,” she said stalwartly, sticking her round chin out at him. As she did, Bryn flicked her spoon into the pot again and handed the rewards to Lewis, who took it with a bewildered look. He stuck it in his mouth though, after a little raise of it in cheers, and was quickly turned to the dark side by its flavor.

            Vicente came in and headed straight to Eliza. “All good downstairs?” he asked.

            “Yes, all good. Now, as I’m sure your blockade is flawless as usual, go ahead and relax, Vicente. You’ve done well.”

            He smiled warmly, his teeth showing, and then joined the throng. “What are we having?” he asked.

            “Minestrone,” Bryn replied, eliciting a frustrated squeal from the cook. “Don’t worry, Ari. It’s as good as usual,” and the girl smiled, lifting her face proudly in bashful silence, just as Vicente did when complimented. Lewis swiftly dipped the spoon into the unguarded pot.

            Dinner was, in fact, minestrone, and even though it was made of canned food, it was heavenly. We turned off the stove and sat in the darkness, filling our bellies in silence. When we finished, we stacked our bowls in a little tower. Arianna would clean them in the morning, but for now we settled back, done with our duties for a while. Eliza, who had descended from her ledge, passed around a package of cookies.

            “We won’t all fit in here,” she said after a while, her voice soft with the night. “Half of us can take the room at the end of the hall. No need to go in the one next door.”

            Bryn and Arianna had already set up their beds, and Eliza had her desk, so we decided the boys would take the other room.

            “Can you tell a story?” I asked Vicente, who was leaned against the base board of the bed right beside me. The others heard the request and quietly echoed it.

            “Shouldn’t we get some sleep?” he asked.

            “It’s alright. It’s still early,” Arianna said, crawling over to squeeze between us and lean her head against his chest. I saw Vicente smile and raise his head to Eliza; she nodded. So he cleared his throat and began to talk. The darkness filled with his voice and soon forgot itself, leaving behind its nature and dancing with the light of a different world. A long time ago, I had listened to music every night before bed because, honestly, I hadn’t been fond of the dark even before it hid herds of flesh-eating undead things. But darkness did not exist when Vicente told stories. It was somewhere else, somewhere with fear and doubt and monsters. But not here.

 

 

CHAPTER 6 - HIGHWAY TO HELMOND

We got an early start the next morning. Eliza was in charge of the herculean task of waking everyone up; she slept deeply but once awake, became lucid with frightening swiftness. The rest of us were not so quick to stir; Eliza’s alarm clock would go off and those of us who it awakened would bury down deep in our beds and hope to be targeted last.

I could hear Eliza moving around in the other room, and savored the last vestiges of sleepiness as Bryn and Arianna’s complaints pierced the air. It was still dark and I was furthest from the door, so I probably had a few minutes before she found me.

The room grew lighter as the door opened, and Eliza’s shadowy outline picked her way across the minefield of sleeping mounds. She knelt by my bed, where I lay staring sleepily up at her.

“You awake?” she asked.

“Nope,” I replied.

She patted my cheek gently, and I caught her hand and laughed. “Okay, I’m awake,” I said, sitting up. She fell back to her haunches and watched me stand.

“I take it you want me to wake up the boys?” I said, stretching away the stiffness of the night.

“Yes, please. I need to look over the maps before we go.” She rose slowly and went to the door. “You and Bryn help Vicente with his wall. Let Chris come eat.”

I patted Vicente on the chest until his eyes flickered open, then kicked at the bundle that was Chris and was rewarded with an angry yelp. Lewis was awoken with a little more finesse, and soon the quickly lightening room was filled with yawns and the rustle of beds being rolled up.

“Good morning, everyone,” I said, when they seemed conscious enough to hear me.

“Good morning, you b*****d,” Chris yawned, slapping me nice and hard on the shoulder. I caught his shirt as he knelt to pick up his hammer.

“Hey, hold on. You’re on breakfast duty.”

His eyes lit up and he yawed with extra verve. “Awesome.” 

“Yeah, you earned it,” I said, and he patted me in earnest on his way out.

“Who’s with me?” Vicente asked, pulling on his gloves.

“I can help,” Lewis volunteered, but I shook my head.

“It’s my and Bryn’s turn. You go make sure they save some food for us.”

It took twenty minutes to dissemble the veritable work of art that Vicente had erected last night, returning it to the crude state of boards and nails and wire. By then, breakfast had been consumed and the team was fully awake, lining the hall between their bundles. Lewis guiltily approached and informed us that he had been unable to save us anything, so Bryn and I shared handfuls of dry oatmeal as we wrote a parting message on the wall of the hallway. “Safety exists in Compromise. Don’t be a jerk about it and you can come in.” Eliza drew the route back to the settlement underneath our Sharpie letters. I used to draw the maps, but then Bryn told me they were indistinguishable from the guts already on the walls. Eliza had better spatial visualization skills, anyway, so I wasn’t too hurt.

            We took down the bars and bells. Everyone helped out to make it go faster. The outer defenses were normally a waste of time, but when they were used, they made up for the extra work. When we finished, we carried all of our stuff out into the dawn and loaded the bus. Bryn took her turn at the wheel of the truck, and Lewis elected to go with her. We rolled out of the peaceful lane and back onto the highway to Helmond.

            Christopher fell asleep almost right away, so the bus was pretty quiet. Vicente was drawing, Arianna reading, and Eliza sitting next to me, eyes closed. I left the radio off and savored the hum of road beneath wheels and the soft whisper of breath and page.

            Of course it didn’t last. It had no right to. But still, as we crested a rolling hill and a swarm of zombies unfurled below us, I couldn’t help but be a little bitter.

            “Eliza,” I said, reaching for her shoulder. Her eyes snapped open, and she was talking before she was even on her feet.

            “We’ve got zombies, everyone. Time to wake up. Get your blades, grab a window. We’re gonna be alright. Chris, are you awake?”

            “Yeah, yeah, I’m ready.” He was already climbing into the back, handing out weapons.

            Eliza stood beside me, fleetingly meeting my eyes before taking in the situation outside the window. The truck had already passed behind us, and I could only barely see Bryn and Lewis in the rearview. D****t, I hated when danger came up on us like this. I’d rather all be together, facing it head on and ready. But we’d be alright. It was only the undead. How deadly could they be?

            At the bottom of the hill, two hundred yards away, were forty or so zombies. They were coming at us fast, attracted by the movement of our vehicles. Their loping, broken run made their ranks shudder like a dying animal. I could already see their algebra-class eyes, vacant and dark. Soon, they would be able to smell us. No time for the perfume, no time for anything but forward.

            “Aaron, I want you to accelerate and cut through right there, see? Pass by the red van. That should take out enough of them for the truck.” She raised her voice. “Chris, I need you in the back. Cover Bryn. Be careful.” Chris nodded and stood against the back window. Vicente and Arianna were kneeling in seats on either side of the aisle, blades waiting. I pressed down on the accelerator, and we headed to meet the zombies.

            The first body struck the bus with the sound of a body hitting a bus. If you haven’t ever seen a disturbing movie scene involving this sound, I’m not going to force you to imagine it. (If you must, though, it sounds like a giant hamburger slapping a metal griddle.) It was accentuated by the fact that the bus was covered in spikes and blades. The first few Z’s looked almost befuddled as the un-life left their eyes. But the rest, shielded by the bulk of the impact by their brave brethren, began to clamber, half broken, crying like baby birds, over the piling bodies. I smashed the accelerator to the floor, trying to keep up enough speed to clear the way for the truck. I could hear the hamburger-splat of zombies throwing themselves against the sides of the bus. The muted crack of Chris’ silenced pistol echoed between the shouts of Vicente and Ari. They were cutting zombies from the side, sliding knives between the planks, avoiding the snapping jaws.

Ahead, between the cars, my route crossed the grassy medium, which was bent into a trough. I spoke over the ringing clamor from the back. “Do you see that ditch?”

“Of course, Aaron. It’s fine.”

“We won’t make that, El.”

            “The angle’s just shallow enough. I calculated.”

            “You calculated! How dare you? You know my stance on math.”

            “Aaron,” she chided. “Keep going.”

The ditch was very close now. If we didn’t make it through, and got caught, it was going to be a long day in the office.        I had to believe her and her witchcraft. “Hold onto something, then.”

            The bus bounced wildly as I gunned it through the ditch, tossing the loose zombies into the air. Chris whooped in adrenal joy. I whipped the wheel back and dodged the red minivan, swinging in an arc to pass through a narrow gap in a great wall of cars. The truck passed through behind me. An almost eerie quiet fell. Now, most of the zombies on the bus were dead, and the ones left alive on the road were streaming feebly through the gap, slowed by bullets and bus blades. We high-tailed it for a solid ten minutes until the swarm was just a faint memory on the horizon. Then I pulled the bus over and dropped my head to the steering wheel.

            “Well done!” Eliza said as Vicente, Chris, and Arianna flooded to the front, unbitten and alright. I stood and put my arms around Chris and V’s necks. Eliza smiled, at me and then at the team, proud and relieved. Arianna hugged her around the waist, and Eliza lowered her head to rest her cheek on the girl’s dark hair. “Well done,” she repeated softly.

            We stumbled out of the bus doors and into the daylight. Bryn ran towards us, Lewis’s hand in hers, and flung her arms around Arianna. “Hello,” she said, and I rested my hand on her shoulder.

            “Lewis, you good?” I asked, as, with pats and wide smiles, the team assured themselves that everyone was alright.

            “I’m alive,” he sighed. “I’m alright. Bryn was amazing. Chris, too.” He turned and found the sharpshooter. “Hey, Chris. Thank you.”

Chris accepted his handshake with a grin. “Yeah, man. That was pretty intense, huh?”

Lewis pushed his glasses higher. “Yeah. I might have passed out at some point.”

Bryn gave me a quick hug. “He was brave,” she said quietly, and I smiled as she pulled away. “Eliza, nice route. You knocked those damn things right off.”

“Thanks,” Eliza said, looking pointedly at me. “I calculated.”

             I shook my head, rolling my eyes.

            “Okay, guys. Why don’t we go a little further and then stop for a nice lunch?” Eliza suggested. “It’s probably not super safe here.”

            As the team gave their okays, I took in all of their faces, one by one. Lewis, Bryn, Arianna, Vicente, Christopher, Eliza. And me, whole and healthy. We were okay.

            I turned and headed back to the bus. It was still laden with twitching zombies, trapped on the spikes. I flipped them off as passed. No matter how many times those things came at me, there was always this moment afterwards; the soft pounding of my heart in relief and pride and gratitude.

 

            Half an hour later, I pulled the bus into the center of green parkway just off the highway. There were no trees around, so it was hot as hell. But it meant we could see any danger from far off and load into the bus before it arrived.

            It took a while to clean up. Many of the zombies hadn’t received enough head trauma to stop snapping at us, so first we had to decommission them. Then, we donned plastic gloves and plastic-bag ponchos and hauled them away to a pile in the corner of the field. The bus remained tastefully colored with gore, but there was nothing for it now. We washed our hands with soap and water and then with hand sanitizer.

The Ford’s windshield was shattered but still in one piece. Vicente could replace it, if we ever got back to Compromise, but for now he reclaimed his place as driver, since he was second best. Behind me, of course.

            We spread blankets on the grass and opened some cans. The sun shone down like a laser beam, and what mosquitos dared to brave the heat were vicious, fat things with the appetites of the undead. I shared a can of something brown with Vicente, augmented with what I could sneak from other’s meals. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. I took a deep breath of molten air and sighed, remembering a place that was much cooler and safer and had fewer gore-spattered school buses.

 

            “So this is Compromise,” Eliza said, impressed. “Clever.”

            We had finally found, after six months trekking through Baconless together, what could possibly, just maybe, be a truly safe place. It was an underground government facility and, according to the men who greeted us, had two thousand residents. All of whom were humans, bar one.

            The zombie was in the Compromise lab, where a boy named Lewis Atkinson led us during our welcome tour. He was fifteen and shrimpy, one of those people whose survival you wondered at. I had learned by now, though, that looks were hardly anything at all. At Eliza’s delighted request, we were taken the clean white lab, filled with vast numbers of sciencey things.

            In a glass and steel cell swayed a zombie. It was sleeping, or something very like it. Lewis said it was here for research. They fed it spam to keep it from starving so that it could maintain its half-decomposed state, but it was sluggish from a lack of live prey.

I paused a moment to appreciate the elegant curves between the folds of decaying skin, stuck forever in a half-preserved cascade of flesh. I wondered, if zombies had actual working brains, how they would organize their society. Not like, governmentally, but in a petty high school way. Would this zombie be hot? Shunned due to a bad case of maggots? Hell, I didn’t even know if it was a girl. Had been a girl, rather.

I tapped the glass with my fingers, and the zombie twisted its head slowly to the faint movement. I almost smiled at the irony; in a world where things like this meat-bag wrote the rules of who was cool, the hierarchy made far more sense than the a*s-backwards human rules. Now, if you survived, you had earned it. And anybody that earned a place in Baconless deserved at least a prom crown.

Something feebly brushed my elbow, and I looked down to find the boy’s outstretched hand hovering nearby. As soon as my eyes met his, he smiled his odd, secretive smile and said, “Come on, you can admire it later. Your friend has already moved on.” And indeed, Eliza was bent over a white table, peering into a row of petri dishes. I moved over to her side and found that they housed scraps of zombie flesh, placed carefully in the center of their dishes with usual scientific anal retentiveness. I glanced at her face and found that it was tight with excitement. I was assured of this as her hand clamped like a shackle around my arm.

“Look, they’ve injected them with strains of viral hosts.” Her attention shifted. “Oh, a centrifuge! I haven’t seen one since…” She broke off, not in remembrance or regret, but in sheer joy at the discovery of a little white fridge beside what was, probably, the centrifuge. I threw a glance at Lewis, who was grinning with kindred, geeky pride.

 He caught my gaze and jerked his chin at the little lines of vials behind the frosty glass. “Live viruses, rare drugs… the works,” he explained, and then turned his attention to Eliza, who was crooning- and it was definitely the first time she had ever done that around me- and reached out his hand in another unsure attempt to get attention. “Miss?” Eliza did not hear him, or more likely, ignored him.

I chuckled and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her up and away from the rare vials. “What is it, Lewis?” I asked.

“Well, lunch ends in five minutes. The scientist will be back. I think I should show you to your rooms.”

“Sure. Thanks for the tour. Eliza liked it, too.”

Lewis smiled crookedly and led us from the lab. Out into the hall, and then along the walkways that led further from the bright electric lights. It was like reverse dying, in more than one way. As we went, there were more and more people- real people, not trying to kill each other or trying to decommission things that wanted to kill them. Just wandering around in that odd, chaotic rhythm that groups have; paths crossing like arteries going to a hundred hearts. Lewis turned down a side hall, decorated with patchwork carpet and paint that was obviously an attempt to make it homier. At the end was a metal door with a window like those janitor closets have.

“This was a janitor closet,” Lewis said, flicking a key from his belt and slotting it into the lock. He swung open the door to reveal a small room, just big enough for a mattress, a plastic table, and a few crates. A string of lights cut in a sagging x across the cement ceiling. Lewis flicked a switch and the lights sputtered to life, casting a feeble but warm glow over us as we stepped inside. “But now, it is your room, Mr. Aaron.” He held out the little silver key. “It’s not much, but you can do whatever you want to it, make it a little more comfortable. Someone’ll show you how to get stuff later.” He went to the door. “Ms. Eliza? Your room’s a few hallways down.”

Eliza was perched on the bed; she lifted her head like a bird. “Oh. Alright.” She went to the door and looked back at me. “See you in a sec?”

I smiled and slipped by her out the door. “See you now. C’mon, I wanna make sure my room’s bigger’n yours.” 

            As we walked, I could see the glow in Eliza’s eyes. “You glad you’re safe, or are you still remembering the centrifuge?” I asked.

            I will never forget the look she had on her face as she turned to me. It was an odd mixture of excitement, satisfaction, fear, and icy certainty. “A year ago, I would have done anything to work in that lab. Well, it’s not that good of a lab, but of course resources are limited.” She tightened her hands into fists and murmured with relish, “But the problems of zombies, oh, that is a puzzle that demands a lab.” She walked in silence for a moment. “I’m happy that we’re safe. I really, really am. But…” She gave me that look again. “How do you think they get enough supplies for all these people?”

            “I don’t know. But is it really our problem?” I thought of the vast world above these grey hallways, where danger shuffled in hunting droves, where the next breath was not guaranteed.

            She shrugged at this. “If not us, then whom? We are a part of this community now and we need supplies, too. And the world is full of food and medicine.”

            “And zombies, if you’ll remember. ‘Bout the size of humans, feed on flesh, look kinda like piles of rotten mashed potatoes. Ringing any bells?” It was a feeble attempt to change her mind. But I knew where this was leading.

            “I know, I know. But…”

            I sighed. “But we’re going back out, aren’t we?”

            “We don’t have to. But I probably will, eventually.”

She said it as gently as she could, but it still stung. “Oh, no.” I said darkly. “You’re not going alone, you stupid girl.”

            She tilted her head back as if she had discovered a marvelous secret. “That’s the best part, Aaron. We’re not alone anymore.” Her arms were out, as if to capture all the people flowing around us.

            Her words were terrifying, but her eyes wavered with that softness that every so often warmed their green depths. I looked around at all of the people who were ensconced unknowingly in her embrace. 

            Eliza stopped walking for a moment, leaving the little guide to walk on ahead, and turned to look at me in earnest. “It would be safer, better with others.”

            “Really? Do you believe that?” I searched her eyes for the look that would take me in.

            She said softly, “It got better with one.”

Those words would echo in my mind for a while to come, but she went on before they sunk in. “Trust me. Zombies are just one danger. People here will need new clothes, more food for the winter. Even if they have crops, they need all the help they can get. Don’t tell me you really don’t want to help them.” It wasn’t a question. She knew I did. “Besides, it wasn’t bad all the time.”

            And that was true. The road had been hard, incredibly so. But not bad, not always.

            “And anyway, how long do you really think you can live in a janitor’s closet?” And her eyes glimmered and I knew I was doomed.

            I laughed, and then turned and ran after Lewis. She trotted after me, and I looked over my shoulder. “Promise me. Promise it will be alright, and I’ll take the bad with all the rest.”

            She nodded. “I’ll find the best damn people here, and it will be alright.”

            I was filled with an unnamable emotion, somewhat akin to fear, but quieter and stronger. Maybe it was hope. I didn’t know. All I knew was we wouldn’t be staying in these dim, safe, boring hallways for very long.

           

            As we pulled back onto the road after lunch, my mind began to turn to Helmond. That swarm was just going to be the first of many as we neared the city. I felt my chest flutter a little. We could do it, we could. But maybe we wouldn’t.

            I looked down at Eliza, who felt my gaze and looked up at me, her eyes peaceful and comfortingly green. She didn’t look away until I did, and then she returned her eyes to the map in her lap.

            We had to do this. For all those people living in Compromise, for all the other people secreted away underground across the world. Give them a chance to come out into the light, if they wanted to. Give them hope enough to brave Baconless, land of the swarms and sweet air. 

 

 

CHAPTER 7 - DAUNTING

The next two more nights and days were a restless ride through Zombie-laden territory. We slept in shifts, listening to the sounds of the night, crouched with our guns in our sleeping bags. During the day there were always zombies in sight, standing alone or shambling along in hordes. A silence fell in the bus. It was not somber, but almost reverent. For the first time we were crossing into a place where the undead were the owners and we were the vermin. And always the city was on our minds.

            On the third morning, Eliza gave me a warning that we were an hour away, and so we left the truck at the side of the highway and all loaded onto the bus. It was safer that way, and there was no need of the Great Wall where we were going.

            Then, too little time later, I crested a hill and Helmond lay sprawled beneath me. I slowed the bus to a halt. “We’re here,” I said. They came to stand beside me, and together we stared out of the window and down onto Hell.

            The city was not too large. I could see the far side, past the crumbling skyscrapers and scorched brick buildings. On this side, a greened copper dome reflected the early light, jagged holes marring its surface. Between the broken buildings, the roads moved under a carpet of shambling bodies.

            “Well, this could be a bit difficult,” I said.

            Chris snorted. “Sure, Aaron. A bit.”

            “There’s a lot of them,” Lewis said.

            “Yep,” Arianna replied, her hand in Vicente’s.

            “Where’s the CDC building?” Chris asked, looking at Eliza.

            She pointed. “There.”

            I squinted. “Where?”

            She nodded. “Exactly.” There was a collective moan. “It’s nearly in the center, behind that blue skyscraper. That’s an office building on Main Street. So, luckily, it’s pretty much a straight shot from here.”

            “But unluckily…” I said.

            She grimaced. “Everything else.” Then she turned and stood with her back to the city.

“I know you all want a really good speech right now, but I can’t give it to you,” she said, her voice soft and thoughtful. “All I can say is something I’ve never said before. I’m afraid. I feel afraid often, actually. But it never does much good to tell you that.” She shrugged. “But now, that doesn’t matter. I want you to know. I want you to know so that you feel less alone, so that you understand that it’s possible to stay in charge through the fear. I want to tell you so that I can feel a little better, too. Because this is gonna be hard. This is gonna be the hardest, most dangerous thing we’ve ever done. And the most important.’

‘I’m afraid because right now, in this moment, I have more to lose than I ever have before.  I have a chance to bring a vaccine to the settlement. And I have all of you. I never thought…” She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them, her voice was steadier than before. “I don’t want any of you to get hurt, but I think that’s why I have the will to go into that city. I want the vaccine for you. So if you need another reason to fight, fight for the people right beside you. Protect them, look after them. We won’t fail if we do that. It’s okay. They’re only the undead.”

And we all said, together, “How deadly can they be?” The metal walls echoed with the sound of shared courage.

            Eliza laid out the game plan as we all suited up; spraying down with perfume, strapping on backpacks with water and medical supplies, holstering every weapon that would fit. Then everyone sat quietly in the rows of seats, and in the rearview they looked like school children, dirty-faced and anticipating to a cup of milk at home. But they weren’t. They were zombie slayers, and they were made of sterner stuff.

            Eliza stood next to me, and although her presence was calming as always, I wished fleetingly that she were far away. She looked down at me. “Ready?” she asked.

            “Hell, yes,” I replied, and the bus started down the hill.

 

            Normally, Eliza’s plans were subtle, devious. But this time, the nuances of the chess board became more of whoever-throws-the-chess-piece-hardest-wins sort of rules. There was little for it.

            As we approached the city, everyone knelt at a window, two on each side, and one in the back. Eliza’s hand was gripped hard on the back of the seat. I smashed the accelerator so hard that, combined with the speed from the hill, the bus was going over sixty by the time the buildings rose around us. Their shadows cut through the glare of the sun and I got a fleeting glimpse of huge drifts of trash and ravaged storefronts before the zombies hurtled into view.

            The first wave of the undead was nearly obliterated by the speed of the bus, but there were more to take their place. They were everywhere, shambling aimlessly in sluggish hordes, their moans not yet awakened to screeches. I plowed straight through the ones in the road, still moving so fast that by the time we were spotted we were out of reach. Still, I could see them beginning to stumble after us in our wake.

            There were so many that the striking bodies soon robbed the bus of its momentum, and then they began to attack in earnest. Eliza left to fight at the windows, and I for a moment I panicked. The blue skyscraper was still ten blocks away. The road boiled under the swarms; the metal of the bus shuddered and clanged with their onslaught. I knew their fingers would be reaching through the gaps in the back, searching for my team. They hissed and clattered hungrily, but the team maintained a stolid silence, answering the questing fingers with blades and spikes. Their resolution helped me focus. I had a job to do. I dodged cars and debris, focusing on the road beyond the piling undead, not squashed enough to cease clawing desperately for us.

We managed to hold out to the road to the lab. I took the turn at top speed, sending zombies flying through the air. Someone shouted, and I fought back the urge to look behind me. As the bus hurtled into the parking lot, I saw that the building was ravaged, broken window glass littering the parking lot below. There had been a tiny chance that the building would be safe, but that was gone there was nothing to do but keep moving. I drove as close to the main doors as possible, executing a pretty fantastic swerve to pull in backwards under the awning.

I turned off the ignition and leapt out of my seat as fast as I could, taking my place at the back of the line forming down the center of the bus. I was deeply relieved to see they were all alright. I tripled-checked that I had my weapons and my pack just as Eliza, behind Chris at the front of the line, shouted, “Let’s go!”

He swung open the door and jumped to the ground. The team filed out behind him, dropping one by one to the cement and sprinting towards the relative shelter of the building. The zombies chasing us had fallen behind a bit, unable to take the corner so quickly, but I could already hear their deafening cacophony. They had nearly caught up with their quarry. I slammed the bus door behind me and ran.

In Eliza’s somewhat-plan, these glass doors were the first obstacle. They were probably still locked, and though we could have simply shot our way in, it was best to have something to close behind us so as to keep the undead hordes at bay.

The doors were unlocked, and that was lucky, for we had no time to spare. I glanced over my shoulder as I raced inside, and could see the road, where a grey wave tumbled towards us like oatmeal. Very fast oatmeal that had grown tired of being on the receiving side of human appetites.

            We tore across the lobby (which, despite the decaying stacks of paper, food, and zombies, was rather nice) and into the stairwell. We crowded onto the first landing and stopped, panting. We couldn’t see the doors anymore, and the zombies had not arrived in time to spot us. They would stay around the bus for a while, but hopefully wouldn’t try to come inside, since they couldn’t smell us. I had closed the building’s door securely behind us.

            Eliza was studying a map she had nicked from the front desk. It had some mice droppings on it, but it was still a welcome sight. Her eyes darted back and forth for a moment, and then she folded it and put it in her pack. “Okay. Lab’s on the third floor.”

            “Great. Now we just have to make it there and hopefully a nice vaccine will be waiting for us,” I said, and saw a few tight smiles.

            I gripped my ax as we climbed the stairs slowly. We passed the second landing with no trouble, but at the third a surprise awaited us. Not the nice kind. The, oh, great, a damn blockade kind.

            The door would only open an inch, just enough to reveal that the hallway beyond was full of chairs and desks. We all lined up behind the door and shoved, but it wouldn’t budge.

            “They must have nailed something to the floor,” Vicente said.

            “Great,” Arianna sighed.

            “It’s okay,” he said.  “There are always at least two stairwells in places like this, for safety. Eliza…”

            “Yeah, yeah. You’re right. There’s a fire escape on the other side. We can get to it by the second floor.”

            Luckily, that door was not blocked, so we left the safety of the stairwell and started down the shadowy hall. Zombies had definitely been here; there were stains on the walls, and the windows to offices were shattered everywhere. The glass crackled under our feet. Eliza walked behind Chris, softly calling directions. She led us through the warren of hallways, occasionally checking the map. There was, dare I say, a disturbing lack of zombies. There should have been dozens. Helmond had fallen swiftly, and, judging by the streets, most of the victims hadn’t gone far.

            We reached the fire escape with little trouble. There had been only a few zombies in frayed suits, and Chris had shot them before they even noticed us. We climbed the stairs to the next level with our weapons tight in white knuckles. When we reached the third floor door, Eliza called halt and we all gathered about on the landing. She turned the handle and inched the door open, peering through the gap.

            There was a moment’s pause and the she turned around slowly. Her face was almost comically calm, but since I knew that meant she had thrown up a façade over something worse, it wasn’t funny at all.

            “There are a bunch of zombies in there, aren’t there?” I asked.

            “Well, I counted forty-two.” We moaned loudly. As Eliza closed her eyes to think, I went forward and peeked around the door.

            Damn, that was a lot of zombies. The hallway beyond was lit only by faint sunlight seeping from far-off windows, and the shadows shifted with a veritable rock concert of the undead. There were definitely more than forty. I stepped back, closing the door gingerly, and looked about. “Yeah, we’re gonna need a plan.”

            Eliza’s shoulder was touching mine, and she opened her eyes when I spoke. Without stepping away to the center as she normally did, she began laying out just that.

            “Okay, there’s the remains of a blockade scattered around the other side of this door,” (I hadn’t noticed that, as the horde of zombies was slightly distracting), “which we can use to our advantage. Although… wait, who has a flare? Bryn, you’ve got one, right?”

            “Yeah, um…” she rummaged through her Jansport.

            “I’ve got the other one,” I said, beginning to unzip my pack, but Bryn had already found hers.

Eliza took the flare and fingered the cap. “I’ve noticed something with the Z in the lab. It seems to be attracted both to movement- which is based on degrees of light- and color. The Z’s in there are probably not used to either. Maybe, if we throw this in first, they’ll be attracted to it. Then, we can rush in and have a bit more space, plus their backs will be turned.”

“That sounds better than just busting in there,” Chris said.

“Well, there will be that, too,” Eliza said.

“I think it’s a good plan, given the circumstances,” Bryn assured her quietly. “How far do we need to make it?”

            Eliza answered easily. “Down this hallway for forty feet, then turn left, and then about twice that distance. Then, on the map, there’s a limited access door that probably has a keycard pad, so the door may be intact. If so, you’ll have to break it, Bryn. If not, hopefully we can still use it to keep out the Z’s. The lab is down several short hallways after that.”

“So we toss the flare, fight like hell, and make it to the door,” I said.

“Yes.” She replied, steely. “Close combat weapons will be best.”

“Eliza?” Ari asked tentatively.

“Yes?”

“I dunno if I can fight so well with my crowbar.”

Lewis raised his hand slightly. “I’m not too great at baseball bat usage, either.”

Eliza stepped forward and put her hands on both of their shoulders. “You move forward of your own free will. But I know I am not alone in wanting you by my side for this.”

They both stood straighter. Lewis took his glasses off and tucked them into his button down’s pocket. “Thank you. But I was just warning you to stay clear of my swing.”

I chuckled, and Ari smiled nervously. “I’m fighting too, Eliza,” she said.  “I’ll be brave.”

Vicente leaned forward and kissed her hair. “That’s my little girl,” he said gently, and we all smiled.

“Okay, everyone, be ready. We’ve got to go as fast as we can. Good luck,” Eliza said in her ringing voice, and handed me the flare. “As far as you can get it,” she said softly.

I opened the door as slowly as I could, pulling it wider millimeter by millimeter until I could fit my shoulders through. Then I inched forward and stood staring at the zombies.  A few stared back, but before they recognized me for what I was, I had struck the cap, drew my arm back, and pitched the flaming stick like a missile down the hallway. It arched over their heads and landed fifty feet away, striking a decidedly confused zombie.

            There was a tremendous squealing as the undead turned and swarmed tight to the red light, clamoring to get at it. I flung the door open and started sprinting into the newly open hall before me. By the time we reached the backs of the Z’s, Chris and Eliza had already shot a dozen of them. They holstered their weapons and swung out their ice pick and machete and gutted two zombies Macbeth-style. I implanted my ax tip in a skull, spun, and decapitated a Z about to grab Vicente. He took out a particularly ugly fellow destined for my throat with a well-aimed blow of his homemade mace.

The turn for the next hall way was only ten feet away, and we reached it through a gory swath along the back of the swarm. But by then, the flare had become considerably less engaging, and they began to turn around and cry at us. The sound was grating, deafening, and their limbs swished and thumped as they careened after us.

             The world was blurred as I pushed my limbs to go faster, faster. Ahead, a metal door jumped in my vision. I heard Eliza shout out, and Bryn dropped to her knees and slid, reaching the door with her pack already in her hands. She found the Open Sesame Seed and tucked it under her arm, frantically unscrewing the panel that was meant to read keycards. The door was intact, alright. There was no way we were making it through unless Bryn could break in, and there was no way we were making it at all unless she could do it quickly.

            We spun around and formed a circle around her just as the zombies reached us. The force of it nearly drove me back, but I lashed about maniacally, the people to my side just out of reach of my hacking blade.

            Anger began to fill my limbs, undirectional and untethered. I roared as I crushed their decaying skulls, their dark blood drenching my arms. One made it past my ax and jerked me to the ground. My elbows smashed against the floor and pain blinded me for a moment. When I blinked the red from my eyes, Chris was standing over me, his pick imbedded in a zombie’s head. He kicked it backwards and pierced two more. I lunged to my feet and joined his frenzied attack. Zombies slumped to either side, and for a moment, I could see beyond into a second hallway that stretched away to our right.

             Another herd of zombies was shuffling into view. They began to twitch when they saw the commotion, and I saw them lean forward to sprint. I screamed, but no one heard. No one could have done anything anyway. We were losing. The circle was tightening, Bryn shaking with desperation at the mess of wires in her hands. Arianna was on her back, Lewis and Vicente nearly overwhelmed as they tried to help her back up. Eliza was in the very center, bearing the weight of the attack, her scything machete doing little to mark the ranks of attacking bodies.

            Impulsively, I ducked and shoved my way through the gap. It closed behind me as I sprinted towards the new swarm. I brought the leader down, and then, burning with rage, all the zombies around him.

            “I just need a little more time!” Bryn shouted. I jerked my ax from the final Z’s skull and turned to run back.

A grinning zombie stood right behind me. I gave a choked yell. As I brought up my ax to strike, it clamped its mouth around my arm. I felt the teeth sink deep into my flesh.

Blood and brain exploded over me, and I blinked away the wetness to see Eliza through the horde, her gun raised. As the ravaged zombie fell, she looked slowly to my arm. The scarlet pool of blood around the mark broke and trickled down my elbow. I saw her mouth my name, but I was already ripping through my pack. I found my flare and struck it, light the color of my blood bursting around me, sparks stinging my stomach. I waved my arm ferociously, screamed even though they could not hear me. Zombie heads twisted my way, and I stumbled backwards. As the herd began to turn away from the dangerous prey and lope towards the attractive, lonely quarry, I could see, for a frozen moment, everyone staring at me. I met Eliza’s eyes, and as I turned to run, I screamed.

“GO! You have to get the vaccine. Go! It will be alright! It’ll be alright.” Blood began to pound in my ears, and I flew around a corner, zombies streaming hungrily behind me.

A hand swiped at my back. Weapons didn’t matter anymore.

I stumbled, pain like the hottest fire crawling up my arm. “It’ll be alright,” I mumbled, but there was no one to hear.

I began to pant, but I forced my quickly locking muscles onward. I had to get as far away as possible before the disease took hold and the undead lost interest. I had to know my family was safe.

My flare sputtered in the wind. The zombies kept screaming. Red ate into my vision.

A force struck my back, and my chin cracked against the floor.

Cold flesh pressed against me, but the pinch of teeth did not come. The zombies stopped howling, grew quiet.

The pressure left my back. I couldn’t see. My skin burned like it was alight.

The Bite was in me, and the zombies left me to become one of them.

My family will be safe.

It’ll be alright.

 

CHAPTER 8 - UNDEAD

18 Months Ago

The world was darkness, tinged red by my eyelids. The dimness was pierced by the sharp cry of gunshot. The hot air echoed.

I opened my eyes groggily. The ceiling overhead was stained and dull. The mattress, stiff and angry, pressed against my wet back.

Another shot. I struggled to my elbows, scouring the sleep from my eyes with filthy fingers. The air was sweltering with the heat of the afternoon, but I had nothing else to do but lie in my square barricade of shelves and sleep a nightmare-ridden sleep.

Silence. Maybe I had imagined the gunshots, some vestiges of a dream. I was just lying back down when the air was rent by three more shots in quick retort.

I lurched to my feet, the movement making my head blur, and grabbed my gun on my way out of my cell of shelves. My fire ax was already tied to my hip; a habit driven by paranoia and one too many jammed guns. I quickly crossed the souvenir shop and fumbled with the padlock on the door. More shots. Whoever it was, they were nearby. I checked between the gaps of the boarded-up display window, and saw the undead swarming an alley. I flung open the door, cursing in fear as I sprinted across the road.

I fired off a few bullets, aimed at the sides of the zombies now only fifty feet away. All of them missed dreadfully. A few decaying heads turned my way, peering with soulless, nightmare eyes, snuffling and creaking. I stumbled, almost stopped. Maybe whoever was in the alley was already dead anyway.

A shout came, human and alive and angry. I regained my speed, swinging my gun onto my back and drawing my ax. I met the first zombie with an uppercut to the chin, dark blood soaking the blade.

I took down six zombies before they, or I, knew what was happening. By then I could see into the alleyway and glimpsed a figure above the clamoring bodies, blade arching back and forth. Then fingers grasped my throat and I swung frenziedly. Three more zombies fell aside, decommissioned in blind adrenaline. I looked up, searching for my next target, and found that I stood surrounded by prostrate bodies, silent and mostly still. I sighed in relief and looked around for the person whom they had sought.

At the end of the closed alleyway, a girl stood on a dumpster. As I watched, she wiped her broad knife on her shirt and jumped easily to the street. She pulled a pack and a mess of blankets off behind her, and then picked her way to where I stood somewhat in shock.

“I’m not bitten,” she said by way of greeting, and held her hand out.

It was slippery with blood, but I shook it anyway. “I’ve never decommissioned that many zombies before,” I mumbled, bewildered. My pulsed hammered against me.

“Decommissioned- good word. They aren’t alive, so it makes sense.” Her eyes ran me up and down, and I took the chance to look her over, too. She was slim, fit, shorter than me, but not by much. She must have been about my age. She had long, wavy hair the color of chocolate, drawn back from her grimy face in a neat braid. She was pretty, with large, calculating eyes. She seemed sane, and not hostile. “You look strong enough,” she said brightly.

“Huh?” I tore my eyes from the fallen things.

She shifted her weight. “You said you’ve never decommissioned this many before, but you look strong enough to have.”

“Oh, yeah.” I shrugged. “I used to play football. Little good it does if you don’t stand and fight, though.”

She nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.” And then smiled a little. “Well, thanks for fighting now.”

“Sure. We humans have to stick together, when we aren’t robbing or fighting each other.”

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “In that case, and this may be presumptuous of me, but may I spend the night in your shelter? I mean, if you have one.”

Happy as I was to see a face that wasn’t half fleshless, I almost said no. Over the past seven months, since the world had fallen apart, I hadn’t had very good luck with my companions. I had thusly been on my own for a while now. Maybe she would be different, though, and not try to kill me, or abandon me, or be a huge butt-elf.

“Sure, you’re welcome to stay as long as you need.” I held out my arms. “I can take your bag,” I offered.

“No, it’s alright. Thanks,” she said, so I shrugged and led her back across the road to Sally’s Souvenirs and Gifts.

Inside, I lent her some of my not-yet boiled water to wash off with.  “What’s your name?” I asked when I had scoured the filth from my skin.

“Eliza Cummings.”

“I’m Aaron Young. It’s nice to meet you.” The phrase sounded foreign in my mouth.

“You, too.

“Potato chips?” I asked, holding out a yellow package.

The girl just raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t those really stale?”

I popped open a bag and tossed a chip into my mouth. “Sure,” I said. “But you can’t be picky.”

She dried her bare arms off with a towel and turned to face me where I crouched on the dusty floor.

 “Anyway, they’re like comfort food,” I said. She looked like a cat, watching me with assuredness.

“They’re have elevated levels of supersaturated lipids and minimal nutrients besides Sodium Chloride,” she said, somehow unpretentiously, and then added, “Which hardly counts.”

I grinned. “Then I’ll be comforted and fat.”

She grimaced, but it dissolved into a faint smile as she looked around the room. “You have a nice place, here.”

“Well… Thanks. I’ve been here two… three days. I dunno, it’s pretty s****y, but I’ve got these neat stuffed animals that watch over me.” I petted a nearby toy and looked slyly at her. “This dolphin is angry because the narwhal stabbed him, but he didn’t do it on porpoise.”

She moaned, looking very pained. “That was terrible.”

I waved a stale chip at her. “Hey, watch it. I happen to love puns.” I looked away and said softly. “Though I haven’t had reason to use them in a while.”

 “I’ve never had reason to use a pun,” she said, almost playfully.  “But I know what you mean.” And I believed, deeply, that that was true.

I smiled a gratefully at her. “By the way, you don’t have to pretend that this dump is nice. I haven’t even cleaned it, and there are like, dead mice in the corner.”

“Oh. I actually meant it. I don’t really notice that kind of thing so much. Guess I could pay attention to it more.” She rubbed her cleaned arms. “But I’ve been on the run, decommissioning zombies whenever I can. So it’s nice, to me. I mean, I was asleep on a trashcan when you found me.”

I whistled, impressed. “Damn, you actually go out and kill those things on purpose?

“Yeah, sure. I mean…” She seemed to want to say something, but not something she could put into words enough to entrust it to me. “Yeah.” 

“Aren’t you afraid of them?” I imagined her out in the world alone, surrounded by the terrible, frantic things, and my voice wavered in fear.

Suddenly I was captured by the fiercest gaze I had ever seen. “They’re just the undead,” she said in a ringing voice. I tried to hide my shudder at the word, at the dark, screeching images that flooded into my mind, but she must have seen it. “Hey,” she said, and I came back to myself and to her eyes. They were green, like the farthest grass promises to be. She looked at me for a moment, her head tilted as if with thought. Then, her gaze grew gentler. The change seemed to surprise her almost as much as it did me. A smile began in her eyes and lifted her lips. “They’re just the undead. How deadly can they be?” she asked, and then smiled in earnest. “They can’t even die themselves.”

I laughed happily. “You know, I’m gonna count that as a pun, Eliza Cummings.”

She grinned, and it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

Night came, and Eliza was still in my shop. She had spread her bedroll, of all places, on the top of one of my barrier shelves. We hadn’t talked much more. She wasn’t so much of a sharer, I thought, and anyway, the silence wasn’t so silent that I minded it. She mostly read on her shelf-nest. (She had found a few books in the corner. I had completely over-looked them, and even if I had seen them, I wouldn’t have thought to open them.)

But now, it was dark. She put her book away and lay back in her bed. I settled onto my mattress and stared at the invisible ceiling.

“Aaron?”

I started at the sound of my name. “Yeah?”

“Thank you for letting me stay in your home.”

I laughed at her earnestness, at her word choice. “You’re welcome, Eliza.”

“Goodnight,” she said softly.

“Goodnight.”

Outside, the undead howled like broken wolves. But they were far away and unaware of me, lying on my mattress, watched over stuffed narwhals and snow globes and a girl.

Maybe, I thought as I drifted off to sleep, I’ll ask her to stay with me for a while. We might just get along.

 

I opened my eyes. The speckled ceiling stared back. Groaning, I sat up slowly, my muscles feeling like discarded juice boxes. Around me, the hallway was dark and silent. I turned my head. Just more eerie hallway, devoid of zombies.

The thought crossed my mind that the Z’s had gone back after everyone else, and the adrenaline that gave me got me to my feet. My heart thudded weakly, erratically. I was suddenly aware that I was soaked with sweat. I wiped my face with my shirt and then bent wearily down and picked up my ax.

            As I walked slowly down the hallway, a thought struggled through my addled mind. I was alive. That was strange. I shouldn’t be. I looked down at my arm. Yep, there was the perfect arch of teeth marks, crusted with blood. And I had felt the fever in my body.

            No f*****g way. I was immune. That was the only explanation. I had been infected, and my perfect, amazing body had survived.

            With the realization came a wave of clarity, and then a second wave of crippling weakness as relief buckled my legs. I collapsed to my knees and put my head in my hands. I listened to my breath, my heart. I laughed giddily. I was alive.

            “You lucky b*****d.” I mumbled as I climbed to my feet. I had to find the others now. They probably thought I was dead. Eliza had seen… I caught my breath. Eliza had seen me get bitten.

            I began to run. She thought I was dead. They all did. And they were most likely in the building somewhere, fighting for their own lives. If they were even alive; I had no idea how long I had been out.

            Somehow I made it back to the metal door. There had been a few Z’s on the way, but in my rising desperation they stood little chance against my swinging blade. I slowed as I approached the door. I nearly buckled with relief as I saw that the only bodies were the zombies. They had made it through. There were no Z’s around; they must have been wary of the dead zombies, now that there was no prey about to make the danger worthwhile.

            The door was closed, but I knew it would not be locked now that Bryn had opened it. I picked my way like a stork through the carnage. A sound to my left made me turn my head. A little ways down the perpendicular corridor, the first zombie of a herd wandered into sight. As I grabbed the handle I could hear their quickening footsteps, but I was safe on the other side by the time they arrived.

Ignoring their muted creaking and snuffling, I leaned against the door and took stock of my surroundings. It was lighter in this hallway, and there were yellowed charts and papers taped all along the blue walls. A few zombies, clad in musty lab coats, lay on the floor, seeping onto the white tiles. There was nothing moving in the short length of hall which I could see. Jogging to the end, I found that it split two ways, left and right. There were no decommissioned zombies to follow, and I was about to panic when something on the wall caught my eye. It was a little ways down the right hand fork; my name, scrawled in Eliza’s handwriting. Underneath was a wavering arrow. I grinned and patted it thankfully. She was still holding onto the crazy hope that I survived. Or at least she had been however long ago they had passed this way.

            I jogged as fast as I could to the next intersection and found the little arrow waiting for me. I followed the sharpie trail through the hallways, passing doorways and lounges and labs, all scarred with fading filth.

             I was getting close now, and I was running, flying around corners, heedless of whatever dangers may have awaited. The hallway ended at a door. I slowed, hardly aware of my panting, my shaking limbs. I somehow couldn’t bring myself to open the door, so I knocked, the tiny rap echoing like a gunshot.

Soft sounds within, and then the door opened and Chris stood there. His gun hung forgotten by his side, and as I met his eyes they widened with disbelief. The sight of his pock-marked face flooded me with comfort, and as he opened the door wider without speaking, I kept my eyes on his, assuring him I was alright. But I couldn’t speak yet, either.

            He closed the door behind me, and I started across a wide lab, cluttered with tables and trash and science. In the center, in a small, cleared-out space, huddled the team. They were very close together, looking tiny among the disorder. Silence hung over them. They were looking up, and in the moment before they understood what was happening, I saw their faces. They looked utterly dead; their eyes dim behind tears and their faces heavy with the burden I had- my breath came ragged once. And then they stirred in wonder, their eyes wide and brightening, their mouths agape in silent gasps, and I could feel the pulse of their growing joy in my exhausted limbs. But still I kept walking until I stood in the center of the circle.

            Eliza crouched there, curled tight. Her arms were over her head. It was the first time I had seen her like that, in that position, around the others. The team rose to their feet, eyes shining, but they did not come forward. They were waiting.

As they stood, Eliza lifted her head and looked questioningly up at their faces. Slowly, she turned, following their eyes, and her gaze settled at last on me.

She started, unfolding from herself. I stared at her, not sure what to say. I had been knocked further into silence by her eyes, dim and worn by crying.

They glimmered now with fresh tears as she stood slowly and faced me. “Aaron?” Her voice broke and I stepped quickly forward, pulling her into my arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I mumbled as she buried her face against my shoulder. I wrapped my hand around hers and a sharpie fell from her fingers. I smiled at it. “Don’t you ever give up, you stupid girl?” I asked.

            “Yes,” she said faintly, and looked up into my eyes. “But I’m alright now.”

            Suddenly overcome, I leaned in and kissed her. She kissed back, and I could feel her heart against my own. Warmth blossomed in my chest and filled my limbs.

When I pulled away, I rested my head against hers. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that,” I said quietly.

“No.” Her eyes were luminous. “But you should have done it much sooner.”

I laughed, and heard the sound grow around me. Suddenly, I remembered the others and turned a little guiltily, but they were all beaming with pride and happiness. I grinned back at them. “I think I’m immune” I said, feeling even happier than they looked, if that were possible.

            “No s**t, Aaron,” Chris grinned back.

            I held out my hand and Ari took it. I pulled her close and the rest of them followed, and soon I was engulfed in their collective embrace. Ari, pressed against me, giggled as their arms were thrown about her. Eliza kept her hand in mine, but the other was around Lewis’ shoulders. Vicente patted my cheek. “Please don’t ever do that again,” he said, and the tears tickling my eyes broke and flooded over. I dropped my head and sobbed, elated and scared and relieved.

            After a little while, I regained my composure and looked up, sniffling. “Did you find it?” I asked as our huddle loosened a little. No one went too far.

            “Yes, it’s here,” Bryn said with a grin, gesturing to a mid-sized plastic box, sitting atop a pile of paper. My heart skipped a beat. The others saw my face and smiled widely, sharing my wonder.

            “Well thank bacon for that,” I managed, and then looked around. “You weren’t waiting for me, were you?”

            “No, sorry Aaron.” Arianna said. “We all thought… Well, you know. We just didn’t leave because we… we didn’t know how.”

            “What do you mean?”

            Lewis shrugged. “There are still a lot of Z’s out beyond the door, and outside. We weren’t composed enough to brave them.”

            Eliza tugged at my hand a little. “They’re all just being kind. They could’ve made it, but I hardly made it here. Vicente and Bryn practically dragged me.”

Vicente shook his head. “We were all upset, but Eliza… Well, we couldn’t get out without our leader on her feet. We’ve been here for an hour.”

            I looked down at Eliza, brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “I figured you’d just keep on. You’re always the one who saves us.”

            She smiled quietly. It wasn’t sad, but somehow profound. “Not this time. This time you did that.”

            Chris nodded. “Yeah, Aaron. Bryn got the door open just before the zombies came back from chasing your idiot a*s.” He chuckled. “I can’t believe how stupid you are, man.”

            The tears threatened again, and I looked down at my chest.

Bryn said, “You saved all of our lives. You really did.”

            And I really had. Finally, I had done something for them. Paid them back for what they had given me. But, looking around, I realized with great surprise that the gratitude in their eyes was not for that. They were just glad I was home.

CHAPTER 9 - INTO THE SUNSET

            I ran my hand through my hair and cleared my throat. “Well, we actually did it. That is the vaccine for the Bite.” I shook my head in astonishment and then looked down at Eliza. “How are we gonna get back? I don’t fancy going down those hallways again. And we’ll have precious cargo.”

            “I dunno,” she said. Sadly, she let go of my hand to walk to the box of vaccine. Tapping the white surface, she wrinkled her brow and said, “We could make it safer, wrap it up and protect it, but even then, a single fall could shatter all the vials in here.”

            “That would suck,” Bryn said.

“Would we be safer if we vaccinated ourselves before we leave?” Arianna asked.

            Lewis intercepted the question and shrugged uncomfortably. “Judging by Aaron and other survivors, being infected even with antibodies present is a long, exhausting process.”

            “Yes, yes it is,” I said sagely.

            “Oh, speaking of which, Aaron, drink something right now,” he said, and then shoved his glasses up. “Anyway, we would be stuck in a potentially unsafe place for a while in an incapacitated state, and then be worn out even more when we left.”

            I swallowed a sip of water and smiled at Ari. “I think that means we’re going to wait.”

            “But after we get out,” she said. “Then we can be immune.”

            We were all silent for a moment as that sunk in.

            Lewis grinned. “Yes, we can.”

            Eliza had opened the white box and was inspecting a little injection bottle of yellow liquid. I found my eyes drawn to it. Sunlight shimmering through the gold, and I imagined a choir of angels singing somewhere.

            “Did you find any notes?” she asked Vicente.

            “Yes, they’re under the box.”

            Eliza tenderly lifted the anti-Bite and slid out the stack of paper beneath. While she scanned through it, I gulped down half a water bottle and looked around the lab. It was quite large and quite white. Piles of food wrappers and far more sketchy things were piled so high in the corner that they nearly concealed a pair of long-dead zombies beneath. The rest of the lab’s chaos was mostly in the form of white machinery, scrawled-upon paper, and lots of vials, all capped off with a scenic view of the city’s own decay, uninhibited by window glass. That lay on the street below, glittering in the fierce midday sun. The zombies must have broken it in some frenzy. Probably, it was how the assistant zombie escaped the building.

            “Hey, look at this,” Eliza said, and held aloft a crumpled sheet of notebook paper. Slanting handwriting marred its surface. We gathered closer as Eliza read it aloud.

            “There’s not much time. Zombies have breached the safe zone. The small box marked “Vaccine” has a survivable immunization inside. I have successfully tested it on myself and two volunteers and it works. My assistant refused, due to the stress it places on the body following injection, but I urge you to use it. I am willing to bet it will be worth it. Please, if you find this, bring the vaccine to as many people as you can. The notes with it contain instructions on how to grow the stable strain. Hopefully there are people left who can take it from there.”

She looked up. “He really gave this everything he had.”

Lewis, the respect evident in his voice, said, “I wonder why he had managed to do it when others couldn’t.”

“He must have had some sort of warning.” I said. “He seems to have been locked in here early on; look at all of this food and trash and stuff. He was ready; he stockpiled and then locked up.”

Eliza nodded in agreement. “Hmm. I wonder.”

“What? Did you see something?” I asked.

“Well, his notes have a diary section…” She flipped quickly through the papers. “Here it is.”

“What are you looking for?”

She scanned them for a few moments, and then laughed. “He was a conspiracy theorist.  Actually, more accurately, a zombie enthusiast. He believed the first wave of reports that everyone else denied. He must have started working before the Bite even made it to this coast.”

I smiled. It wasn’t the first time I had been helped by a nerd. “Well, thank you, scientist, wherever you may be. We’ve got it from here.” I raised my water bottle in a toast.

“Speaking of which,” Eliza said. “I think that the best thing to do is just make a run for it. I mean, Aaron made it back through the door without much of a problem, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, the zombies weren’t there at first. But they were nearby. They may still be there; they saw me go in.”

“But we did kill a large amount of them. And we don’t have to get any doors open, just make it back to the stairwell and then barricade it. Easy,” Chris pointed out.

“If they aren’t there, yeah, it wouldn’t be so bad,” Vicente said.

“Aaron, how do you feel?” Lewis asked.

“From one to ten, like a two. I can fight, though, if you need.”

“Well, you’re one of our best fighters, so that puts a large dent in our offensive abilities.” Eliza said thoughtfully.

Bryn rolled her eyes sarcastically. “Gosh, Aaron.”

“Sorry.”

“We could just play it safe. You know, head out, move fast, and if we see some Z’s, I dunno. Run the other way.” Vicente suggested.

Bryn wrinkled her nose. “That seems counterproductive.”

I nodded. “Yeah, and I can’t run that far right now.”

“Really, none of us are in top condition,” Lewis said.

Eliza put the little vial back into its box with a definitive click. “It’s a good plan. Or at least the best we’ve got.” She looked us over to see if anyone disagreed, but we all nodded. She dipped her chin once. “Okay. While we’re here, we should grab what we can. Everyone spread out. We’ll leave in ten.”

As the others dispersed between the tables, Eliza passed a hand across her eyes and sighed, then looked to me with an exhausted smile. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me, too. Are you alright?”

“Kinda tired. But very happy.”

“Good.” I took her hand. “We’ll get out. We found the vaccine, and that was the hard part.”

She smiled a little wider, swung her arm so that mine came with. Then, with a soft laugh, she let go and started off through the lab.

I tried futilely to quell my smile as I chose a direction and picked my way along, putting anything in my bag that looked mildly useful; scalpels, petri dishes, stray notes, even unopened cans of food. Everywhere was a broken story, its careful, parallel stokes ravaged by the zombies. But even through the silent chaos, I felt the people who had once been here.  Reaching out my hand, brushing aside the stained shards, and taking what precious things lay between, I felt the quickening of that story in my own blood. When we all met back together at the door I could see that the others felt it too, this ethereal honor of carrying another’s tale.

            We straightened into two tight lines and faced the door with new resolve. Our packs were heavy and our limbs spent, but we were weighted with treasure and bolstered with purpose, and as we ventured into the empty hallway, it was enough to keep us going towards what lay ahead.

            We reached the safety door without meeting any zombies. It seemed most of the ones in this section had gone the way of the assistant out the window, and the rest had already been decommissioned. When we reached the door, Chris and Vicente, at the front, looked back over their shoulders.

            “Hear anything?” Eliza asked, and they shook their heads. “Okay, go cautiously.” She was in the back beside me because she was carrying the vaccine, swaddled in cloth and paper deep in her pack. We were all conscious of its presence, and as Vicente opened the door, we lifted our weapons in apprehension.

            There were no zombies there, but we moved quickly before they came, stepping hurriedly over the decommissioned bodies and jogging down to the main hall. There, we turned the corner and could see the door to the stairwell. My heart raced. The way was clear. But of course it didn’t stay that way for long.

            The first zombie appeared almost as soon as we started for the door, and Vicente stopped so suddenly that Ari crashed into his back. Chris grabbed them both as we all spun around and ran the other way, I now in the lead. Behind, I could hear the wakening herd crowded in the side hallway, hear the creaking of limbs and muted thump of flesh against flesh.

I turned back into the hallway we had come from, hoping to find safety. A zombie herd was wandering past the door at the end. A head lifted at my presence, and I shouted in alarm and back-peddled. The others heard and kept on, so that I fell in behind them as they continued down the main hallway. Lewis glanced over his shoulder and stumbled, but I caught him and pushed him ahead of me. “They’re close,” he said tightly. I grimaced. I could hear the rising cacophony of their baying screeches, could tell that there were too many of them, almost as many as before.

            Ahead, the hallway ended at a wooden door. Eliza shouted and pointed, and Vicente tore it open. We raced inside and he slammed the door behind us.

After a moment of silence, there was a series of jarring thuds as the zombies connected with the door and wall. Eliza turned the deadbolt just as the slit window exploded inward. We all stepped back as pallid hands scrabbled at the inside of the door, the remaining glass peeling flesh away from gleaming bone. As the team considered the clattering door, I turned and took stock of our new housings. It was a conference room, not too big. In fact, most of the space was taken up by a long table and a bunch of really uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs. The far wall was just a series of big windows. I wandered over peered out.

            “Hey!” I shouted with surprise.

Eliza turned swiftly. “What?” Her machete blade drew an arch of blood from the window.

“Our bus is right below us,” I said, jamming my finger against the glass.

            Bryn jogged over. “Hey, it is!”

The nose of the bus was protruding from the awning, literally just beneath us. There was a level separating us but… “Hey, why don’t we just go out the window?” I suggested, and turned around to find six pairs of eyes regarding me very derisively.

            “What?” I asked.

“Well,” Chris said slowly. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re three stories up.”

I shrugged, my heart quickening as the idea intensified. “But it’s not that far because the bus is nearly a story tall. It’s only about twelve feet away.”

“But we still can’t jump that far,” Ari said.

Beside her, Eliza’s eyes were locked on me, but her face was silent.

I waved my hands wildly at the chairs. “We can build a ladder with these!” I cried, and Vicente laughed.

“Are you serious, Aaron?”

“Yeah, yeah. We wouldn’t have to fight at all!”

Silence.

“Come on, the Z’s are gonna get in soon enough. Do you actually want to fight our way back out? I mean, El just has to fall and it’s all over.”

“Falling three stories would break the vaccine, too.” Bryn pointed out, her nose wrinkled in thought despite her tone.

“I know.” I rubbed my hand through my hair as disappointment settled onto me. “It was just an idea.”

“It’s a good one,” Eliza said softly.

“Really?” Chris asked in disbelief, smacking a zombie hand away with his pick.

“Yes.” She nodded, and I saw her calm assurance sweep through the others. “But we don’t have what we need to make a classic ladder. We’ll need some sort of rope to make it work.”

Lewis touched his glasses. “No one packed any rope.”
            “Wires!” Bryn blurted, then grinned and pointed at the ceiling. “There’s tons of wires up there. They can hold us if we use enough.”

I grinned proudly at them. “See. It’s a good an idea.”

Eliza nodded. “If we’re gonna do this, we have to hurry. The door may break soon.”

“Okay, time for Aaron’s weird plan!” Chris shouted, and we all cheered. A bit too sarcastically, but I’d take it.

“Bryn, Ari, get to the ceiling and find the wires. We’ll need as many as possible. Vicente, Aaron, Lewis, take care of the rest.”

Vicente grimaced wryly but nodded.

“Chris, you and I keep these Z’s at bay.”

We all dispersed swiftly, committed now. I met Vicente and Lewis at the end of the conference table. Vicente pulled on his gloves and eyed the chairs. “I’ve never done this before. Rope ladder, huh?” He frowned for moment. “They’re really unstable.”

 “Don’t worry about that,” Lewis said. “We can manage.”

“Alright, you’re right. Okay. We need to smash up the chairs and make rungs.  You got any energy left in that arm of yours, Aaron?”

“A little, but my superpowers are pretty worn out. I’m just a normal boy now.”

“Sure, that’s fine. It wouldn’t be a good idea to hit them full on anyway.” He lifted a chair away from the table and laid it so that the cushioned back was against the ground. “Okay, you’re gonna want to strike here.” He pointed to where the leg touched the side of the seat. “And don’t worry about breaking the rest of the chair. Just make sure the usable wood is at least a foot wide.”

I drew my ax from my hip. “’Kay. Ready?”

“Hold on. Lewis, stand on the back here. That’s it, but turn around. There may be splinters.” When Lewis had position himself properly, Vicente stepped back and held up his thumbs.

I swung my ax and struck the leg. The chair bucked as the blade bit into the wood, lifting Lewis a little off the ground. The leg was nearly severed from the chair, though I had not swung as hard as I could. I came in closer and finished the job with a short hack, and then picked up the length of wood and held it out to Vicente. “This alright?”

“Perfect. We need about a dozen more. Just take two from each chair so it’s easier.”

“Got it.”

Lewis had turned around but upon hearing this he nodded at me and straightened again, readying himself for the next hit. While we worked our way around the table, collecting rungs from the ugly chairs, Vicente went about his own tasks.

            He inspected the table, crawling underneath, and then rose and regarded the window. Stepping quickly forward, he ran his gloved hands along the glass and the metal frame.

“You wanna explain why you’re stroking the window, hermano?” Chris asked over his shoulder.

“This bar, here across the window, is part of the whole frame. If we shoot the window out, it’ll stay. And I think it can bear the weight of our ladder better than the table.”

“You think?” Lewis asked nervously.

He patted the metal and paused, as if listening. “Yep, it should.”

Lewis did not seem assured, but Vicente had already moved on, satisfied. “Hey, little Ari, how’s the rope coming along?”

Ari was wiggling on top of Bryn’s shoulders, her head hidden by the white ceiling tiles. She squealed something and below Bryn, balanced on a chair, smiled sweetly and said, “We found a bunch of ‘em, but little wormie here is takin’ her time.” There was a protest from above. Bryn jerked her chin to another part of the ceiling. “We have to cut ties along the whole room, so it’ll be a few minutes.”

Eliza slashed a zombie as it tried to squeeze its shoulders through the window and called, “We’re good here. Door’s holding up.”

Vicente nodded. “Good. I’m going to break the window, everyone, so stay clear.”

“Want me to shoot it?” Chris asked.

“Nah, buddy. I think I can handle this one, huge target.” Vicente answered, un-holstering his gun. He climbed onto the table, pointed the barrel at a center section of window, and pulled the trigger three times in quick succession. We had all covered our ears, but I could still hear the crack of gun and the accompanying tinkling of the shattering glass. I looked up to find the glass fragmented into a web of shards, emanating out from three jagged holes in a perfect triangle across the window.

            Vicente took Bryn’s checkered button-down shirt, which she wore over her tank top. Wrapping his right arm in it, he set to work smashing out the window with Lewis’ baseball bat. The crunching, almost melodic sound accompanied the periodic shattering of decapitated wood and the increasingly frenzied zombie cries rather well, and for a few minutes we all worked to the music of destruction.

            But then the notes of danger crept in. The door began to shudder and creak with threatening volume. By then, we had gathered enough rungs, and Arianna had returned to earth with the wires, which she had coiled into a sizable loop. Some of the wires were flat and wider than my finger; others slim and colorful. Under Vicente’s instruction, we lay them all along the tabletop and twisted them together to form ropes about an inch and a half wide and fifteen feet long.

            Bryn and I took our turn at the door, letting Eliza and Chris help with the rungs. The window in the door was surrounded by a pale web of scratch marks from fingers and blades. The zombies had ceased trying to enter through it and were now simply attacking the door. Luckily, they were about as organized as you would expect a moldy-brained corpse mob to be, and the ones in front were nearly immobilized by the others. Essentially they were running in place against the door, which wasn’t so bad, but had begun to take its toll.

            A darkened eye peered through the thin window, fixed on me even as its owner scrabbled against the door. Nightmares once were kept in that pointed abyss, once raced forth from the glazed, predatory nothingness. But now, I pierced it with Eliza’s machete and the darkness dissolved against the blade. Swiftly it fell away and was gone.

            While I worked at thinning the zombies, Bryn braced herself against the weakening door. A few tense minutes passed. Then, with an oddly delicate pop, one of the screws on the hinges gave way. I yelped and frowned at Bryn. “That’s no good,” I said and turned to the team at the table. “How’s it going?” I called.

            “Just finished,” Eliza replied, to my immense relief. “Hold out for a bit longer, we have to tie it to the bar.”

            I nodded and returned with new vigor to the zombie slaying. Bryn grinned at me. “Well, this plan just might work after all.”

            “Shut up. It’s a brilliant plan.”

            She shook her head and was about to say something when the door gave an extra-large jump. Her face quickly became solemn, and she leaned hard against the wood. I gave up on the decommissioning and pressed my back against the door, feeling the shudders jar my spine, fighting them like the zombies themselves. I could see the team gathered around the window, and as I watched, Eliza stepped out of the building and onto the first rung. I caught my breath, choking back her name. She disappeared quickly, and for an endless time, nothing but the zombies moved.

            Then there was a faint shout, and the team began to stir again. Vicente went next, then Arianna, closer together now that Eliza was holding it down below. Lewis climbed onto the ladder and called to us, “Time to go!”

            Then he too disappeared. I glanced at Bryn with a grin and in unison we abandoned the door, sprinting to the window. Bryn went first, and then I ducked the bar and found myself outside, with nothing about me but the sun and the single rung beneath my toes. I looked down and found six faces staring up at me. They were gathered tightly around the base of the ladder, all holding it so that I could climb.

            I took my first step, the wire swaying away from me. My toe brushed the side of the building. I went down as quickly as I could, but it was fairly difficult. I wondered how Eliza had done it with no one ahead of her. As my head passed the base of the window, I saw the door jerk inward, but it held true. Then I could no longer see it, just the blue of the sky in the glass of the next level.

            Eliza held her hand against my back to steady me as I stepped off the ladder and onto the white roof of the bus. I let go of the ladder and smiled around at them. “Ha,” I said.

            “Yeah, yeah. It was a good plan,” Vicente said, and then added, “The ladder was particularly well-executed.”

            Eliza smiled warmly at us before kneeling to open the escape hatch. “We’re not out yet, though,” she warned. “We’re fortunate that there are no Z’s left here, but they could be around any time.” She slid through the hole, catching herself on the seatbacks before ducking completely in. She helped Ari next, and then moved away and let the rest of us climb down. As the oven-like air of the school bus welcomed me, I was bolstered with a new wave of energy. We had made it out of that wretched building, with the vaccine. This was our turf now. I knew what to expect here, in this sweltering metal prism. I felt something approaching indignation rising in me; we would make it all the way out now if we were ever going to.

            I slipped into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. The engine growled to life as the team took their places around the windows. I pulled out from the awning, my heart in my throat, my foot already urging the pedal towards the floor. As I turned back onto Main Street and the lab disappeared, the sheer number of zombies hit me once more. The nose, already laden with skewered bodies, struck the first herd within seconds of turning. They went down beneath our wheel, their sharp cries rippling the ranks of undead with rising excitement. The closest ones began to race towards us like metal shavings drawn to a magnet. The bus rang with their squealing and the impact of their bodies. We made it nearly halfway and then a particularly dense swarm loomed in front of us, and my stomach sunk with dread.

             The bus struggled against the sheer burden of the attack. The team in the back was shouting wordless cries, barely audible over the terrible clamor of the onslaught. I could hear splintering planks and screeching metal against bare bone and the pounding of flesh all around. I began to imagine every scream was one of my teammates being bitten, but I did not turn around. I had to get us out of here. They had their jobs, and I had mine. I curled my shaking fingers tight against the wheel and kept my foot down. Ahead, beyond the pierced and flailing zombies, through the roiling carpet of grey, the road rose from the buildings into the sunlight.

            The noise became so deafening that for a moment I thought the zombie’s had broken in. But then Eliza shouted, and her voice was free of terror. They were still alright. And a moment later, the bus broke from the city and started climbing the hill.

There were no new zombies here, and as we picked up speed, we gained the upper hand. The pursuing ones fell back, and the ones clinging to the side fell away as the team cut steadily at the windows. It grew quieter, slowly at first, and then with a final a shriek, the last zombie crashed to the asphalt and disappeared. In the rear view, the green dome was just visible over the hills, brilliant in the sinking sun.

Our panting breath filled the silence for a few heartbeats, and then Chris laughed. “Goodbye, Helmond!” he hollered, and the bus broke into a tumble of relieved laughter.

I felt the familiar wave that came with the end of all missions hover over me, not yet broken. I was still in utter disbelief. Had we really done it? Despite their sighs of relief, the others seemed touched by the same incredulity. I kept the bus moving as they slumped into their chairs, wiping dark blood from their cheeks. Every now and then I glanced in the mirror and saw their movements, as familiar to me as my own limbs. Bryn handed out towels, and they cleaned off, helping each other silently to scour the day from their skin. Then Chris crouched close to Vicente and helped Bryn unload the packs, laying everything out carefully in boxes. Arianna, her eyes already half-closed with sleep, lay on the seat nearby; Lewis went over Vicente with antiseptic, seeking the cuts from stray fingernails and the rising redness of bruises and strains. I had yet to feel the pain of those in my own body. I was still running from the city, breathing air that tasted like metal. Eliza had come to my side after securing the vaccine and making sure everyone was alright and now sat on the bare floor, looking back into the bus. I could hear her breath, still quick and ragged.

We drove on like this for an hour, speaking in soft murmurs, until the truck came into view. I slowed the bus as Chris and Vicente walked slowly to the front. I stood as they stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at them for a moment, their cleaned skin marked with white bandages, their eyes tired but shining. Chris put his arm around my neck and pulled me into a hug. “Thank you,” he said softly, his chin on my shoulder, and then let go. He nodded back into the bus to the others and then disappeared down the stairs. Vicente hugged me tightly, hand resting on the back of my head. “See you for dinner,” he said as he pulled away and followed Chris out into the afternoon heat. I watched them as they loaded into the Ford and pulled ahead of us onto the road. But they didn’t start driving right away.

A hand alighted onto my shoulder, and I looked up into Lewis’ glasses. “Bryn wants to drive for a while.”

“She wants to drive?” I asked.

Bryn poked her head around Lewis and smiled, a little tiredly. There was a Pokémon band aid on her cheek. “Well, not exactly. But you’re the only one Lewis hasn’t bandaged, and he’s worried. Go on, take a rest. I’ll give your throne back when you’re alright.”

            I rose to my feet, my fingers aching as they let go of the wheel. Bryn slid into my seat and gave a thumbs-up to the truck ahead. As we started moving again, I took a broken step. Hands shot out to catch me. Eliza, arisen from the floor, smiled at the Lewis. “I’ve got him.” Her arm passed around my waist as she led me to a seat. She slid in first and I nearly collapsed beside her, my head thumping against the worn vinyl.  Eliza brushed my hair from my forehead, an act at once familiar and wondrous. I managed to turn to look at her and smile. She made a strange face, and then all at once she was beaming, and I grinned at the brightness of it.

            “What?” I asked.

            She leaned close and kissed my cheek. “We did it, Aaron. Well done.”

            And at that, the hovering wave of relief and gratitude broke over me like tsunami, and my vision blurred with tears.

Eliza smiled affectionately. “It’s alright,” she said softly. “We’re alright, Aaron.” I nodded, smiled, laughed.

And then the exhaustion hit me like a bus. I was newly aware of the screaming of my muscles, of the vicious burning of my arm, of the stinging of the grime against every inch of skin. I squirmed in discomfort, and Lewis, crouched beside me, caught my wrist and held it still. “Eliza, calm him down. It’s been too long already, I need to check his bite.”

Eliza’s voice came calmly. “Don’t think about it, Aaron. You’re being looked after; think of something else. Here, think about dinner. I’m sure Ari will make something great for us tonight, won’t you?”

Ari opened her eyes at the mention of dinner and nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes. I’m going to make lasagna, I think, though I don’t have oregano…”

Up front, Bryn laughed. “Who needs oregano when we have a chef who doesn’t even need bacon to make things delicious?” Ari lifted her little round chin and smiled.

 “Alright, Aaron, sit up a little better,” Lewis said. Once I had struggled into something resembling a sitting position, he turned my wrist until the pale underside faced upwards. I could see my blue veins winding between his fingertips, and stared at them in something of a stupor until he let go. “Pulse is a little slow, but steady. Do you feel alright?”

“I feel like a pile of wet cement, actually.”

“Good. At least you feel like something,” he said with a sideways smile that crinkled his eyes, and I grinned despite my exhaustion. “I’m going to clean your bite now, ‘kay?”

“’Kay.”  I gave him my arm and immediately regretted it. He scoured the blood, both mine and the zombies’, from my entire forearm until it gleamed like porcelain. Then he attacked the tooth marks with antiseptic and a rag. As I began to curl my fists in pain, Eliza said my name.

            “Aaron, before we get back to Compromise, you should give the vaccine a title,” she said, attempting to distract me. I closed my eyes as Lewis pressed gauze against my stinging re-opened wound. I could hear El’s teasing smile as she said, “It’s a pretty fantastic opportunity to immortalize a pun.”

I grinned and turned my hand over on my lap. As her fingers curled into mine, I managed to turn my mind from the pain of my arm and body.

I took a deep breath of sticky air and let the world wash over me. Beyond the dark of my eyelids, I could hear the faint clamor of death metal, mingled with Bryn and Ari’s giggles over a joke. The bus tilted and swayed as it strained up a hill, passing through the maze of rusted cars. I felt the absolute emptiness of my limbs, the subsiding burn of my wound, the pressure of the soft bandages and Lewis’s fingers against my skin.

The day settled into me at last. Again came the stillness in the stairwell, the gaze of my family as they crouched there awaiting the terror of the building and its cold, grey swarms. I saw Lewis cry out in rage as he swung his weapon, Ari already at his side, their back and forth movements like a dance. I heard the thuds, the screeches, the shrieks, and then the defiant cries that answered them. I felt the darkness, sweet and final, as the undead left me for the first and last time. Felt the sorrow mingled in the black, and then its insignificance to their arms about me and their heads bowed against mine. I saw the tiny, white box now safely in the back, its story now ours to tell.

Eliza’s hand moved slightly and I opened my eyes and lazily tilted my head to look at her.

Her face was framed by steely walls and planks stained maroon with guts, and was all the more beautiful for it. She returned my gaze with an easy smile, and I felt the echo on my lips. The green of her eyes was radiant now in the sunset slanting between the boards and I could see straight into their depths. There was strength there, where it always, infallibly was.

And, for the first time, I felt with a warm certainty that my own eyes showed the same.

 

 

 

EPILOGUE

Two Months Ago

The early spring sun warmed the roof where I sat, making the air taste like sweet grass. To either side of me, Vicente and Christopher lounged in their folding chairs, picking off zombies as they wandered by on the street below. It was supposed to be target practice; Chris was helping me perfect my aim. He had been training me for months, though, and by now our lessons were a little less focused.

Chris leaned over to pick up his lemonade. “Hey,” he said, “look at that.” He was pointing to a nearby trashcan, overflowing with refuse. He walked over to it, feet crunching the pea stones.

Exchanging looks, Vicente and I followed. Chris knelt on the ground and pulled a dark piece of cloth from the heap. He held it up, eyes wide with wonder.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a t-shirt,” he said.

“Very funny. I mean what’s that symbol on it?” I pointed to the grinning white skull.

“It’s from an old video game called Call of Duty. I used to play it all the time.” He brushed a small bug off the sleeve and set it down on top of the trash heap. Then, to my horror, he began to take off his shirt. His white belly stuck out as he squiggled out of it and tossed it aside.

“Oh, no. Don’t put it on,” Vicente moaned, as Chris picked the Call of Duty shirt back up.

“Oh… damn.” I put my hand over my mouth as he proudly pushed his head through the hole.

“Comfy.” He patted it fondly. “Man, I used to love this game.”

“Do you miss it?” Vicente asked

He looked thoughtful as we walked back to our chairs. “You know what, I don’t. It was an escape, you know. The graphics were so great, I mean, it was a whole ‘nother story that wasn’t my own. And there were people online who didn’t bully me.” He hefted his gun and stuck out his be-skulled chest. “Man, if a bully came up to me now, I’d tell him to go to hell.”

I smiled. “Or to Helmond.”

He laughed, caught another zombie in his sights. “Nah, brother. No one’s crazy enough to go there.”

 

Author's Note

I would appreciate any comments! I wrote this with very few revisions, so there are some rough patches along the way.