LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (58 page)

“It isn’t your call to make,” I say to him sharply. Greg looks at me like I’ve just stuck a knife in his stomach when he approached me to hug him. I look up from the map at Greg, staring him in the eyes. I love Greg. I’ve loved Greg since before all of this happened. I’m not like Marko and Katrina or Lexi and Noah. I’ve loved Greg all the way back when the world still made sense, but he’s in the wrong here. I’m not his property. I’m not his safety blanket that he can hug when the lightning starts flashing and the thunder booms overhead. I’m a woman and I’m a daughter. My father just died and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him tell me how I’m going to honor him. “I love you, Greg,” I tell him with as much strength as I can muster. “But I don’t need your permission with this. Lexi doesn’t need anyone’s approval on this either. I was wrong in trying to stop her. So now that this is all out in the open, I’m going with her. I know that it doesn’t make sense to the rest of you, but this is our father’s last wish. He wouldn’t have told us about Jason if it didn’t matter. He wasn’t like that. So if we decide to go, then get out of the way.”

I don’t know what happened to Lexi after I came upstairs. I think she stayed in the room with everyone, poring over Dad’s maps. Greg was unwilling to relent on the idea that it was too dangerous for us to go out there. He asserted that it wasn’t that we needed his permission, but that it was just too dangerous. He claimed that because we were all friends, he had a right to say whether it was a good idea or not to go wandering off into the wilderness. To him, this was just Lexi and me wanting to go camping or something. I don’t know what he was talking about. This was not a prison for anyone. This was not someplace where we needed special permission in order to go out into the world. Any one of them was free to leave at the slightest desire or interest. I wouldn’t stop one of them. I would be worried about them, but I wouldn’t protest it. It made me angrier because Greg seemed more concerned with Lexi going than he did about me.

To be fair, it was probably because he knows how stubborn I am and how volatile Lexi is. By his thinking, he was probably hoping to sway Lexi so that she would turn on me and try to talk me into going back to their side of the fence. I know that he’s wasting his effort. Lexi isn’t going to switch over to his side. I know that he’s afraid of losing me, but I’m not staying here. I’ve made up my mind. Even if they magically convince Lexi, I know that she’s right. I know what I have to do now. I’ve never seen things more clearly in my life until this point.

When I left the room Lexi was talking about leaving, which was driving both Greg and Noah insane. At that point, Devon was starting to chime in, telling Lexi that she wasn’t thinking clearly and that she needed to sleep on it, maybe take a few days. By his logic, Dayton wasn’t going anywhere, so what was with all the rush? I suppose he had a point, but time was a compromise and that meant that they would only try to push their luck more and more. I don’t think I have it in me to put up the good fight for more days than this. I want to go as soon as possible. I want to put this all behind me and see the open road with Lexi. I hope they don’t get to her.

I noticed as I was leaving that Skye was cleaning the blood off of the table. She looked up at me for a moment with a dark look in her eyes, the kind of look that made me feel bad. She didn’t have the patience to put up with all of this. Skye knew the fate of her family. Her grandparents probably didn’t survive the quarantine. We’d heard reports of the looting and the roaming packs taking whatever they wanted in the quarantine zone, starving inevitably. Her family was right in the middle of all of that, resigned to their doom. I mouthed ‘I’m sorry’ to her as I was passing. She just blinked and nodded to me softly as she went back to cleaning. I don’t think that Skye is going to care if we leave. I think she’s come to accept the world the way that it is, broken and scary.

There wasn’t much to say after telling everyone of my decision. Lying in my bed, I feel like I’m going to throw up. My head is pounding and my heart is racing. I don’t know why I thought that I would be able to sleep after all that happened. Lying in my bed, all I feel is heat wafting off of my body as I lie under the sheets. There was no way that I’m going to be able to get comfortable. I want a strong drink, but the liquor is long gone. I wish I had gotten out of there and not seen the hurt look on Greg’s face.

Basically, I told him that his opinion didn’t matter. Who says that to the one they love? What kind of relationship am I expecting to garner if I tell him that I’m not interested in what he has to say? I went ultra-feminist ninja warrior on him and I know that it’s going to bite me in the ass, it probably already is. I look into the darkness of the room, staring at the drywall. There’s a hole in the wall where Tony, Marko, and Greg got drunk in here one night and accidentally fired off a round from Tony’s Colt .45. That was when we designated an armory and locked up all the weapons. Tony still kept his .45 on him at all times, but everyone else followed the rule. I look at the hole, marveling still that they didn’t kill anyone with that little stunt. I know that it’s morbid to worry about that, but still. Thankfully it just blew a hole into a storage room, fatally hitting a vacuum cleaner and that was it. I often thought of that wall as dying. I know that it’s a silly concept, but it feels like the structure was injured and we’ve just left it that way. It feels like a form of abandonment.

The door to my room slowly opens and I know that it’s Greg, coming to try and talk to me. I can hear everything in this house and it’s not helping with my plan of going to sleep and putting this day behind me. Honestly, this feels like the longest day in my life. It probably has been. I could tell exactly when Lexi left the room below, all the shouting stopped. What ensued afterwards was a heated debate that rose to some levels of anger and frustration, but never to shouting and screaming like when Lexi was out there. As he steps into the room and softly closes the door, I feel sickened that he’s even here. I don’t want to be with him right now.

Maybe I do, though. I love Greg. He was the guy on campus who liked to play everything. In the summer he threw Frisbees, footballs in the fall, basketballs in winter, and baseball in the spring. He seemed to be great at everything and even when I didn’t understand why he was doing something, like going to the gym every morning at four, I still admired him. He was a man who knew how to relax and I was a woman who only knew how to work. I could never really be relaxed without Greg around. He was my confidant and my best friend. I could burn away hours just lying in bed with him, talking about things. I never expected him to be as well informed as he truly was. Sure, he maintained B’s and C’s in most of his classes, but the man knew about everything that was going on. When I found out that he listened to NPR when he worked out, I thought I was going to die of laughter, but at least it all made sense after that.

I listen as he strips off his shirt and then his jeans, climbing into bed with only his underwear on, just like he always does. He never believed in pajamas or anything remotely similar to that. During the winter, he wore these tattered old cotton pajama bottoms from when he was in high school, and that was it. Sometimes he’d wear a T-shirt if it got really cold, but that never happens in Florida. He moved to the right climate.

He wraps his arm over me and pulls me close to his strong, warm chest. The man is like a heater that never stops. I love it. Whenever I’m cold, all I ever have to do is snuggle up next to him. He pulls me close and I can feel him and remember the feeling of comfort that he has always inspired inside of me. I close my eyes and wish I hadn’t exploded on him. I wish I hadn’t yelled at him and made him feel like he wasn’t important to me. It’s the exact opposite, actually. He means the world to me and I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. I suppose in a different life, we might have gotten married, lived happily ever after, that sort of thing. I suppose I could cry about what I don’t have anymore, but what’s the point? Life doesn’t give you second chances like that. It doesn’t roll back the clock.

“I’m sorry,” Greg whispers to me. I think I’ve heard Greg say that he’s sorry more times than I’ve ever said that I’m sorry in my entire life. Most of the time, he deserves it, but other times, he doesn’t. I’m just too stubborn to apologize or justify what I do. I keep my eyes closed, not willing to open them. “Me and the others were talking after you and Lexi left.”

I hate him. I’m giving chase after the bait. “What about?”

“That I’m going with you,” he says to me, and I’m afraid that if I open my eyes, I’m going to start crying. I was so afraid that he’d want to stay, that the mystery of the world beyond was too much for him. Part of me knew that he was going to try to come with me and I had run through a thousand scenarios where I tell him no or that I’m not going to let him go with me. He’s too valuable to me for me to see him lose an arm or get shot. I don’t want to have to witness that. I want him to remain intact, alive and living somewhere until he dies of old age, not out on the road, bleeding to death in my arms. But at the same time, I’m selfish. He’s my man. He’s the person that I’ve spent my entire collegiate career with. I can’t just sacrifice him now that I’m running off to chase my father’s dying message. Besides, if Jason has found a cure to the world or salvation of some kind, I want Greg there with me.

I roll over and face him, making out the contours of his face in the pale moonlight bleeding in through the window. He’s so handsome. I’ve never seen a man who is as handsome as he is. I’m so happy that he got the nerve up to ask me out all those months ago. I was afraid that he wouldn’t. “Why?” I ask him, still trying to hold back the urge to cry.

“Because you’re my girlfriend,” Greg says, the right answer. “And I saw your father, babe. I saw what the world out there did to him and if he was alone and that happened to him, I’m not willing to send you out there without me watching your back. I can’t just let you go out there unprotected against the unknown. That’s not what a man does to his girlfriend. And if you want to do this, then I’m going to stick with you ’til the end.”

I lean in and kiss him softly on the lips, feeling him push against me, softly kissing me back, passionately and lovingly. That’s the right answer. I can’t help but kiss him. My entire body wills me to kiss him, to reward him for his love and loyalty. He kisses me back and our lips lock, his arms pulling me close. My great, warm Titan. I love him more than I could ever hope to convey to him.

“But that’s not all,” he says to me, slowly pulling away so he can look me in the eyes. “Noah wanted to come too. I think he’s trying to be a white knight for Lexi or something. One day he’s going to wake up and realize that she’s not into him, but whatever. Once Noah decided that he was going, Devon got angry and said that too many people were leaving. So we took a vote to figure out who wants to go and who wants to stay. A debate ensued and everyone spoke their piece. Marko said that if there was a possibility of a better life out there, then he wanted to come with us. Since he knows the most about cars, if anyone can get us there, it’s him. Katrina freaked out and refuses to go. She says that there’s too much out there that we don’t know about. Skye said nothing, as usual. Devon clearly stated that he wasn’t going.”

He’s forgetting someone. I feel a sinking sensation in my gut. “What did Henry say?” I ask him, hoping that he’s smarter than the average sink sponge. If he wants to go with us, I don’t know what Lexi is going to do with him. He’s going to end up shot or burned alive by her laser vision or something.

“He wants to go,” Greg answers. Before I can say anything he cuts me off. “I know that it’ll be up to you and Lexi in the end, but I think you should let him come. He wants to redeem himself somehow and he thinks that getting us to the place your father wanted you at would be a way of making things a little better.”

“And what do you think?” I ask him, suspicious of what he might say to me.

“I say we take him with us,” Greg answers without a moment of hesitation. I am aghast that he thinks that’s the kind of answer that I want to hear. But I’m fairly certain that he’s reading my mind right now. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but let me tell you why I think you should let him come with us. The guy is fucking useless here. He doesn’t do anything and if we leave him with Devon, I’m fairly certain that he’s going to die without doing anything worthwhile. All of them are. But if he comes with us and those Zombie people are real, then maybe we can use him in a time of need. I know that sounds cold or heartless, but if the guy sacrifices himself so that we can all escape, then isn’t that a benefit for all of us and a chance for him to redeem himself in the end? That’s all he’s looking for right now. Let the old guy die getting eaten alive or something. Then we can all live in peace.”

“He killed my father,” I remind him.

“And it looked like a lot of other people tried killing him on the way here too,” he answers callously. “Val, there’s a lot of distance between us and Dayton. Noah, Henry, and I went over it on the map. He’s got all of these strange markings and these little notes that don’t mean much to us, but it looks dangerous. It’s like he avoided every town on the way here that he could. Every time he did go into a town, he left marks and I don’t think that they stand for frozen yogurt shops and shoe stores. Getting to Dayton might end up as a numbers game.”

“Lexi is going to kill him in his sleep,” I tell him.

“Then there will only be five of us,” Greg shrugs. “It’ll be our little secret.”

“I don’t want her to kill him,” I whisper to him cautiously. “Part of me wants to kill him for her. But another part of me understands that if it was anyone else standing in my father’s shoes, we would have commended him for his caution and his trigger finger being itchy. I’m not sure of what to do with him.”

“Well, maybe it’s not for you to decide,” Greg answers. “Let fate decide what happens to him.”

Fate, what a childish notion, but I’m beginning to believe in it more and more with every passing day. Was it fate that brought my father to our doorstep and fate that helped Henry pull the trigger and end him? If so, I’m not sure I like being a victim of fate. I’m not sure I like being a victim at all, but that’s how the world is now. We’re all victims, survivors. What right did I have to decide Henry’s fate? What right did Lexi have? He killed our father so I think that gives us more of a right than anyone else to kill him. Passing judgment would be so easy. It wouldn’t even be difficult to pull the trigger. I could rationalize all of it after the shot rang out.

“How do you propose we get there?” I ask him. “I think Lexi was planning on walking.”