LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (96 page)

Getting through the hole in the fence, I push free of the yard and stumble after Lexi. I feel a new spurt of blood running through my fingers. Something must have happened. It all must have started to dry or something. Hopefully it was clotting. Whatever was happening, it doesn’t matter now. The wound is open again and I feel the blood running over the sticky, hard scabs of blood covering my abdomen. I watch as Lexi tries to find a way over the fence, but gives up. I stumble around the pool after her, looking down at the ground that will soon be a tomb for my remains. Lexi pushes away from the fence and heads for the front of the house, rounding the corner and vanishing into the shade. I look up at the sun. We’re in the middle of midday, but it feels like we’ve been out here for an eternity. I’m just exhausted. I don’t have the strength for this anymore.

Getting around the corner, gasping and wheezing for breath, I see that thankfully, Lexi has left the gate open for me. I feel tired and everything is hurting in my abdomen as if someone has wrapped a spiked belt around me and twisted it tighter and tighter. I look out on the yard and see the truck but I can hardly hear it over the pounding of my own heartbeat in my ears. There are thoughts whirling around my mind and distracting me from the world, like I’m walking in a fog of my own mind right now.

The truck is in the street, waiting for us. I look at the dirty, disgusting vehicle and smile at the sight of it. It’s such a miraculous thing to see it there, coated in scabs, dust, and filth. Stumbling forward again, I keep walking until I’m halfway across the yard. I look up and down the street for signs of zombies, certain that they’re coming for us. As I look, seeing no signs of them, I suddenly realize that I’ve been the biggest fool in the world. All that work, all that effort, and now my own death is at hand and it’s all been for naught.

“I forgot the phonebook,” I mutter to Lexi who is standing at the door, holding Charlie and comforting him. “Goddamn it,” I say over and over again, my head pounding with the mocking truth repeating itself over and over again. I left the phonebook behind and I’ve lost my life for nothing. I’ve speared myself through the stomach on a vanity project that is now nothing. It’s useless. It’s hopeless. Everything is all wrong.

I feel like I’m going to pass out. Lexi puts Charlie into the seat, not reacting to a word that I’ve said. In fact, she doesn’t seem to give a care in the world to the fact that I’m dying for nothing right now. I watch as she quickly puts Charlie away in the back seat of the truck and turns around, holding in her hands the phonebook.

“I grabbed it before I climbed out the window,” Lexi tells me before she gently places it back inside of the truck. She motions for me to come closer so she can help me into the back of the truck and I grudgingly comply. I don’t know how I’m going to get into that Dodge without help. I reach up to grab the grip and my bloody fingers slip. “Come on,” Lexi says, pushing me in and climbing in after me.

I look in the seat against the door at Charlie who is fast asleep once more, happy to have his mother back. Sitting down feels nice. It’s a welcome change from running through yards, trying to escape the freaks out there. I can feel my worries and my troubles slipping out of me, sinking into the cushion of the seat and dripping down from there. I don’t care anymore. I keep pressure on my wound, but I feel like I’m doing it for someone else’s sake.

“Why the fuck didn’t you listen to me?” Lexi snaps at me as she slams the door of the truck and gives Greg the signal to get out of here. I feel the truck move, but my eyes are fixed on the ceiling, looking at the tarnished cloth. Everything is a mess, even the truck. “Move your hand.” She grabs my wrist and pushes it away. “Let me see.”

She looks at it and I already know what she’s going to say, what anyone would say. The wound is bad, real bad. It’s the kind of wound that puts people in the ground. I know it, she knows it, so let’s all stop playing the game.

“It’s just a scratch,” she says weakly, trying to comfort me with a lie that we both know isn’t going to work. She looks at the wound and shakes her head. “Fuck, this is all my fault.”

“How do you figure?” I ask her, trying to regain my strength. I have to endure this. I have to keep fighting and keep awake. If I fall asleep, there will be no hope of them reviving me. I’m the only one who has a chance at fixing this. I’m the only one that can save my life.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lexi says to me, trying to put on a brave face where she has none. “Like I said, it’s just a flesh wound. Nothing vital’s been hit.”

It’s a lie, but I’m okay with her believing what she needs to for now, even if it’s that she’s deceived me. I try to think about how long I’m going to have. With the supplies on hand and the kind of injury, it’ll be easy to clean the surface of the wound, but the infection is going to kill me. I look at Greg in the driver’s seat as he heads north. Strange that I thought it was going to be him who died from an infection. If I go, he’ll certainly come following after me shortly. I turn and look back at Lexi, who is trying to clean my wound.

It’ll just be her and Charlie.

Chapter Seven

It’s strange that the piece of metal speared into my stomach isn’t going to kill me. What’s eventually going to kill me is poison in my blood. It’s not an unusual thing and it’s pretty standard for injuries like this. As the truck rumbles, I try to count the days that I’ll have if I’m lucky. I can hold out for a while, but my own waste is going to be leaking into my blood soon and it’s going to kill me. There’s a certain clarity in that fact that makes every moment more precious. I’m going to join my father, but I’m not going to leave before I figure out what his legacy is. He gave his life in an effort to find us and deliver a single message to us. That message was the reason for all of this, the reason for my death. I’m not going to die until I know that it wasn’t all in vain.

“What the hell happened back there?” Greg demands after a while. The bouncing and the rocking of the truck is lulling me to sleep, no matter how hard I try to fight it. I’m grateful to hear his voice. The sound of it piques my attention and I blink, keeping my eyes open.

“It was an accident,” Lexi says for us while she feeds Charlie. “We were in the house when Charlie started crying. We tried escaping and kicked open a window. When Val rushed out of the window, she wasn’t looking and got caught by a piece of metal.”

“Fuck.” Greg slams his palm on the steering wheel. “Lexi, how the hell could this happen? Why weren’t you two being more careful? Why weren’t you watching out for things like that? Jesus fucking Christ.”

“It was an accident,” Lexi snaps at him angrily. “Like I said, it wasn’t intentional.”

I want to tell them to stop fighting, but I can’t. My voice is too weak and my whole body feels like a cellphone battery that’s been drained to the last little sliver. I’m afraid that if I start talking, I’ll pass out from exhaustion and that’ll be the end of all of it. No, I’ll let them bicker and argue like an old married couple and when they’re done, I’ll still be alive. I try to think of it like a movie, like I’m not part of it. I’m just a witness, nothing more.

“Well how the fuck are we supposed to be okay with two seriously injured people, a newborn, and a mother recovering from childbirth?” Greg snaps at her angrily. I understand his anger, though I don’t condone it. He was always in a dark place with that leg, but maybe now it’s starting to sink in. I was his only hope. Screw being his girlfriend, I was his anchor to this life. I can already see the sweat on his forehead. Without me, he’s dead. We’re a two for one deal on death right now. That kind of fear breeds panic.

I listen to them argue about how this wasn’t Lexi’s fault and how Greg can’t even feel his leg and that he’s going to probably lose it. The whole thing seems so silly and ridiculous to me in a sort of giggly, delirious sort of way. If I weren’t dying, I would have found it wasteful and infuriating, but whatever. Right now, I’ve got my priorities, even if they don’t. I can only control myself and that’s all that matters right now.

“Jason’s house,” I tell them weakly, trying to keep them focused on the task at hand. I know what needs to be done. I know what they should be doing right now and it’s not snapping at each other. I lob the words out there like a grenade, letting them deal with the explosion while I go back to trying to keep my blood inside of me.

“Val, what do you need?” Greg looks over his shoulder at me. It bothers me for some reason that he’s not paying attention to the road. Why is he looking at me when he needs to focus on the streets that are covered in swarms of cannibals and littered cars? I wave him away, pointing at the road. “Val, talk to me. What can we do to help you? What do you need to fix this?”

I don’t know what to tell him. Part of me wants to break the news to them and tell them what they already know. This just in, I’m dying. A few minutes ago, I would have gladly told them that I was dying, but could still be revived from this horrible set of circumstances, but now, I know the truth. I’m actually dead, just waiting for it all to catch up. It’s like I’m in slow motion right now and at any time the space-time continuum will correct itself and I’ll end up dead on the floor. So long everyone, that was the show. I smile at the thought of just dropping dead on them. It would freak them out so much.

“Val?” Lexi grabs my shoulder and gives me a violent shake. I’m not sure why she’s doing that. I can hear them just fine. That’s when it hits me that I’m supposed to answer that silly question with an actual response. What does he want me to say? I have to tell them something that they want to hear or they’re going to keep pestering me until they hear exactly what they want to hear.

“Find Jason’s place,” I tell him, focusing all my strength on keeping my eyes open between words. “I just need to find some place clean to stretch out and clean the wound. Then I can sew it up and I’ll be okay in a few weeks.”

That’s a lie. In a few weeks, I’ll be dead from an infection because my own crap will be floating around inside of me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It’s a horrible way to die, but people died from it all the time back in the good ol’ days of swords and muskets and stuff like that.

“Val, we don’t know where Jason’s house is,” Greg tells me, like I need to know that. In fact, I don’t care anymore. I didn’t care in the first place. Why are they putting all of this on me? I’m dying and yet I’m still the person who has to decide all of the plans to save our asses time and time again. I’m sick of this crap. When are they going to step up and start taking care of themselves? What’s going to happen when I’m gone? Greg is going to have a few weeks more, if he’s lucky, and then Lexi will be on her own. So that small window of time where it’s just the two of them, are they just going to roam around like chickens without heads? Are they going to wander in circles until they find someone new to follow and take orders and directions from? God help them if that’s the case. I’m the lucky one. I’m punching my ticket and I’m off this crazy trip at the next stop. They can take it from here and we’ll all meet up in the afterlife and the first round will be on me, but until then, they can figure crap out on their own.

“It’s on the map, Greg,” Lexi snaps at him.

“I know it’s on the map, but so is most of the United States,” he snaps back at her angrily. “Your dad didn’t leave an address or anything. He just marked a big fucking X north of Dayton and wished us all luck, Lexi. So unless you’ve got any ideas about where he’s at, we need to find something different.”

“There’s nothing else we can do, Greg,” Lexi shouts at him.

I think it’s poetic justice that I should die next. It serves Lexi right. If she’d been nicer to Noah, like maybe named his son after him, then she might not be in this situation. Right now, the two of them act like they hate the very existence of the other and yet, they’re the two that are going to be stuck together. Poor Greg, he’s definitely getting the short end of that stick. No, he gets off this train too in a little while without serious medical attention. So he’ll just have to endure it for a little while longer.

“Stay away from Dayton,” I advise him, trying to stave off the fighting for when I’m dead. They’ll have plenty of time to argue when I’m gone, so let’s just all save it up for then. Enduring Lexi leaning over me to put Charlie back in his crate basinet that he’s come to call home, I think of what I can do to keep awake. I need to feel. I need to experience the suffering and the agony that is going to force me to accept the reality that I’m stuck in. “Lexi,” I say to her, deciding that giving her a task will help in keeping them from fighting and catching on to the fact that I’m not going to survive. “Remember that first aid kit that I used to stitch up Marko’s hand?”

She looks at me for a moment and nods.

“It’s in my pack.” I point into the bed of the truck. “Can you get it for me?”

Expecting Greg to stop so she can get out and go search for it, I’m once again surprised by the reckless behavior of my boyfriend and sister when she throws open the rear windshield’s tiny little window and proceeds to crawl out into the bed of the truck. I shake my head as her boots slip past my head and I listen to the distinct thud of her hitting the bed of the truck. Picturing Marko in the depths of my mind as I listen to her rattling around back there, I can’t help but feel like that’s a lifetime ago. We had been so stupid and so naïve back then, and surprisingly, I don’t think a thing has changed. I think to survive in this world, you’ve got to be mean and you’ve got to be paranoid. Caution only leads to death and accidents. Paranoia and cruelty will keep you on top one hundred percent of the time. That’s what our group lacked. We all had a collective soul. Sucks to be us.

Worming her way back through the sliding window, Lexi drops down into the seat boots first like some sort of Cirque du Soleil performer. As she hands me the pack, I look at her while she closes the window behind her.

“Nice moves,” I say to her as I open up the first aid kit. She glares at me and I chuckle at the look on her face. Pawing through the contents, I know that everything in here is completely useless right now, even with the rubbing alcohol that we were lucky enough to pick up what feels like years ago. I can stop the bleeding, but right now, that’s not my main concern. If anything, bleeding out is God’s way of offering all of us a mercy killing in times like these. If I stop the bleeding, then I’m accepting the long, hard struggle to death and that’s something that weighs heavily on my mind.

Truly, I want to see what Jason is all about. I want to see the salvation that he’s cultivated out here in Dayton, but at the same time, I know that I’m dying. Even if I get to Jason alive, the odds of him having a working operating room and a surgeon just standing around waiting for someone to help is beyond reasonable and is naïve at its best. I’m dying and I should really, truly just accept the inevitable fate of all things. Isn’t that what this entire dead earth thing has taught us? I look at the kit and know that I have a decision to make right now and it’s only up to me.

Begrudgingly, I have to accept that the intrigue and the curiosity about Jason isn’t just a novelty of my final days, but a necessity for my own peace. The truth is, we don’t get any promises that there will be answers when we die. Even if there’s nothing beyond the veil of death, that’s not even really a certainty for us. God, gods, whatever is waiting for us, they don’t owe us any explanations or answers. This might be my one chance to have the great mystery solved and I’m not ready to surrender that. After all, I’m dying in search of this. I should just do what I can to see this though and at least find out what it is I’m dying for.

Taking out the last Ace bandage and a roll of gauze, I lift my shirt and press the gauze to my wound, resisting the incredible urge and desire to scream at the top of my lungs and shatter every window in this truck. Holding it tightly, I start unrolling the Ace bandage around my waist, tightening it so that it holds the gauze against my wound. It hurts so bad, but I keep strong. Every time I’m forced to use my shredded and torn abdominal muscles, my body screams at me, crying out in pain that I have to catch in my throat. They can’t know how bad it is. If I’m going to try and endure this and take the long road, then I need to walk it with grace and courage.

“Want the window?” Lexi asks me, already getting up and shifting expertly over my legs and pushing me over to the window before I can even answer her. I’m grateful. I want to look out the window, to try and catch a glimpse at whatever safe haven we’re searching for. I picture a fortress in my head with towers and helicopters circling overhead, watching for approaching danger. I don’t know why I think it’s going to be massive and impressive. The odds of anything being massive and impressive anymore are slim at best. We’re probably still a long way off.

“Can I see the maps?” I ask, trying to sound stronger than I actually am. I feel so weak.

Greg looks over his shoulder at me and starts rummaging through the stuff he’s planted in the passenger’s seat until he finds the maps and hands them to me. I take them from him and immediately fold them so that I can see the X above Dayton. I wonder how well my father placed that X. Did he just do it haphazardly and randomly? Or did he do it with care and precision? I look at the X and try to figure out what it is my father would have done. After all, he made the entire journey across country for us, thinking that he was going to survive all of it. I look closely at the map, trying to garner any information that I can from it.

Grabbing the phonebook, I flip through it, leaving bloody fingerprints with each touch I make. I find the maps of the area and I feel satisfied. Looking at my father’s map, I look closely to the paper, spotting the name Trotwood on the map close to the X. Going to the phonebook, I search for Trotwood or a map close to it. Flipping through the pages impatiently, I find Trotwood in the phonebook’s maps of the area. Trying to judge where the X is on my father’s map and the corresponding location on the phonebook’s maps, I come to one single conclusion. We need to head for South Wolf Creek Pike, or somewhere around there. It looks well off the beaten path and it looks like nothing but farming homes and what you’d expect in a community like that, but it has to be there.

“Keep going west until you hit the 49 and then follow it north.” I feel the words sticking in my mouth, the air is thin, and my hands are shaking. I’m not sure if they’re buying the act, but I’m putting on a winning performance in my mind. I think I’m great.

Going over the maps in the phonebook, I tell Greg where he needs to go to avoid Dayton but get us to our destination. Honestly, the only thing worse than dying right now would be dying in overly ridiculous amounts of peril. I don’t want to be fighting off cannibals or survivors right now. I want the rest of my miserable life to go pretty peachy and that means avoiding hot spots for those killers and flesh-eating maniacs. I just want to be left alone with my boyfriend and my sister. I look over at my nephew, who is wiggling and starting to wake up. He’s so perfect. I’m glad that I got the chance to deliver him, to see him before all of this comes to a close. He’s the one truly bright spot in the world and it makes my heart feel a little lighter just looking at him.