Lost in the Apocalypse (2 page)

Emily shot her sister first.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. She pulled the trigger a second time, this time killing Susan. It wasn't her fault, Emily reasoned. They were going to turn. It was only a matter of time. She couldn't afford to wait. She couldn't afford to hope for a cure. There was no cure. There was no hope. There was no help coming. There was only death.

She threw up in the wastebasket before grabbing her backpack and leaving the dingy apartment behind. She yanked her jacket on as she strode down the dark hallway. There was nothing left to hope for now. She probably should have just shot herself, too, but she was too much of a coward for that. Emily made her way out of the building, careful to stay in the shadows as she made her way down the narrow street.

Abandoned cars lined the road. The bumper-to-bumper scene didn't bother her anymore. She had seen it all before. Nearly a month since the infection first began and still, signs of humanity remained. What had once been a bustling city full of life and hope was now a graveyard, only good for one thing: holding the dead.

Emily knew how to step carefully around the cars now, knew which ones might have Infected lurking beneath them, knew how to gauge where to step and when to step. If you wanted to stay alive, you had to be alert at all times. There was no room for feeling tired. Not in this world. Not anymore.

She crept quickly down the road, careful to turn down a side alley before the highway became visible. Up ahead there would be a group of Infected. They were always there. Emily wondered sometimes what it was about that particular spot that fascinated those who had fallen. Did they sense that it had once been a way out of the city? Did they somehow remember going to the highway when they wanted to leave? The on-ramps were completely blocked off now.

Emily and Melanie had tried yesterday to go that way in an effort to find supplies. Despite their familiarity with the undead, however, actually being able to outrun or outsmart an entire group of them would be impossible. Melanie had always been hopeful. She had always clung to the idea that they would someday escape and find a way to be free.

"This can't be all that the world has to offer," she always told Emily. "There has to be something more."

Emily tried to push her sister's words out of her mind. Melanie was dead now: really dead. There would be no coming back for her little blonde-haired sister. The 20-year-old had always been Emily's support system. She had always been an anchor when things got tough. There was no time to miss her, though. There was never enough time to mourn anymore. It didn't matter what you had to do, who you had to kill, where you had to hide. You could not let yourself cry because if you started, you might never stop.

The alley was dark and dingy. Broken glass littered the streets and Emily was once again thankful for her black gothic combat boots. While she had originally purchased them as a fashion statement, they had served her well in the previous weeks. You never knew where you were going to have to run, what you might step on, or what might try to bite your foot. Why the Infected tried to eat her feet, she had no idea, but they did.

It had been nearly a month since the turning, nearly two weeks since Emily had rescued Melanie from her dumpy apartment in Worthington. She thought of her little sister as she made her way down the road. Flies buzzed around an abandoned dumpster. A soft clanging sound let Emily know why. It made sense, really. When people first started to turn, no one knew what was happening. No one understood. The hospitals overflowed with people who had been bitten or scratched, but they weren't prepared for how to handle those dead people coming back to life. Eventually, bodies made their way to dumpsters. Bodies made their ways to any place they would fit, really, at least until people figured out that they needed to leave the city.

Emily was more than ready to go home. Her cabin was a haven in a world of chaos. She only hoped it would still be in one piece when she finally got back. While she didn’t think zombies would have wandered that far out of Howe, she wasn’t so sure about coyotes or drifters.

The journey to save Melanie had been fruitless. It had taken Emily nearly two weeks to reach her sister after the outbreak, and another two weeks of trying to get back had gotten Melanie killed. It had been all Susan's fault, really. If she hadn't been so pregnant and so slow, and if Melanie hadn't insisted that she come along, things would have ended differently.

A snarl from the darkness brought Emily back to reality, and she kicked the Infected that was sprawled on the alley ground. She wouldn't waste a bullet on the mass of flesh that had once been alive. She didn't need to. The Infected had obviously turned a long time ago, probably at the start of the outbreak. Only a month, but its skin was rotting off. Its eyes were hollow as she kicked its head again and again until her boots were bloody and the creature had stopped moaning.

Melanie was dead.

Emily tried not to think about it as she turned from the alley onto the next street, but she knew it was useless. She wouldn't be getting home anytime soon. The sun was already setting over the little town and when the sun set, you needed to be inside. It wasn't a matter of what was fair anymore. It was simply a matter of reality. If you were outside, you would die. End of story. It wasn’t just that the Infected were more active at night, but that you couldn’t see where the hell they were. No electricity. No lights. Just darkness and decay.

Emily walked a few more blocks, carefully avoiding any Infected until she got to a street of houses. She walked on autopilot down the road, knowing exactly how and where to step to avoid making noise. After awhile, Emily busted a window in a tiny, blue house that looked decidedly empty. She crawled inside. Breaking and entering had never been something that she had planned to do. Then again, neither was killing her kid sister. In this world, you did what you had to do to survive no matter who it hurt. You did what you had to, no matter who it cost you.

She didn't bother trying to find anything to board up the window. She wouldn't be here that long, anyway, and the Infected weren't exactly sneaky. From the pristine condition of the house, she doubted that the owner had a toolbox, anyway. Emily made her way up the narrow staircase to the second floor, found the master bedroom, and locked herself inside. The heavy dresser slid against the doorway and she dropped her backpack, jacket, and clothes on the floor.

The oversized bed had the softest blankets Emily had ever felt and the biggest pillows she had ever seen.

She only hoped they would drown out the sound of her tears.

Neil slowed the truck as they approached a sign.

“Howe,” he read aloud.

“More like ‘how in the world are we still driving,’” Cody piped up from the passenger seat. Neil glared at him, but Cody grinned at his stupid joke. “Come on,” he said with a goofy grin.

“He’s right,” Kari said from his lap. How she was comfortable sprawled on top of Cody, Neil didn’t know, but he didn’t ask. The unlikely pair had been cozy ever since he’d found them outside of Forrest, trying to sneak their way past Z’s to get to I-70. “We’ve been driving for days. It’s time to stop.”

“We’ll find a place,” Neil insisted. “South of town.” He noticed the blockage of cars on the main road. There would be no way to make it through the makeshift parking lot. What had once been a bustling town now was filled with abandoned trucks and minivans. All of them were half-covered in dirt: a sure sign the owners had lived on nearby country roads.

“There are going to be plenty of empty houses,” Kari agreed, suddenly serious. Neil knew she saw the dirt marks, too, and knew what they meant. “You can’t live on a gravel road and keep a clean car,” she commented.

“We need to go around,” he shifted to reverse and backed up, pulling a three-quarter point turn that would have made his Driver’s Ed instructor proud. He went to the last intersecting gravel road, turned east, then took the next turn south again. “This should take us past town,” he commented, but no one was paying any attention.

Butter was undoubtedly asleep in the back of the truck, while Neil knew Robert would be watching, carefully keeping an eye out for other survivors, for Infected, for anything. Robert had been tight-lipped on his job before the infection, but Neil would bet half of what he did was off-the-books, special-ops type stuff. He had that look about him.

They bypassed the town easily enough. When they turned back on the main road, Neil glanced back in the rearview mirror.

“Lot of Z’s,” Kari commented. She was right. They covered the road and several turned to look at the truck puttering past. “Step on it,” she said. “We don’t want them following us.”

Neil had been maintaining an even pace, keeping his gas usage low. They were at less than a quarter tank now and they wouldn’t make it far. It was time to find a place to stay. They needed to hole up somewhere, even for the night. Maybe they’d find a place they could stay longer, he didn’t know. They had been running for so long that all he wanted to do now was find “home.”

Any place would do. He wasn’t picky.

“There have to be houses around here,” Neil said. “And if all the Z’s are in town, I’m guessing most of the farmhouses are empty.” He took a random turn and then another. Soon they were in a forested area on a gravel road. They passed a house right in front of the road, but he kept going. If they were going to find a place to stay long-term, they would want to be a little ways back from the road, to avoid prying eyes.

They hadn’t run into cannibals or rapists or murderers, not the way he would have expected. Not with something this severe, this extreme. Neil had expected an infection of this magnitude that had ravaged the world to bring out the darkest of humanity, but all it had done was cause people to squirrel away.

Maybe the hordes of villains would come out later, he reasoned. Maybe strange leaders and factions would take over towns and cause some new, dark shadow of civilization. For now, though, everyone was still in shock.

Everyone was still hiding.

Everyone was still breaking.

“There,” Cody pointed to a faded mailbox that was half-hidden by a tree branch. “There’s a driveway.” It was hidden from the road and Neil took a left into the driveway. The gravel road turned into a hard dirt area, not really a driveway, just a dirt space. He pulled up to a little cabin and they all stared at it. When he looked back, he couldn’t see the road. It was completely hidden by the trees.

Neil turned back to stare at the house. It was a modest cabin, maybe two or three rooms, and there was a dilapidated barn, the kind you’d expect to read about in a horror novel, the kind that held ghosts and ghouls and axe murderers.

“It’s empty,” Robert called from the back. “No car’s been here in a while.” He could tell just by looking at the dirt driveway, Neil knew, and he thanked the stars once again that he had found Robert outside that fucking base.

Forrest felt like years ago: not weeks. They had all been lucky to get out of there alive. Once they’d crossed the Colorado border into Kansas, they’d met groups of survivors who had heard all manner of rumors about what had really happened.

Government experiments gone wrong, people had said. Others whispered about something in the water. Neil had his suspicions though. After what he had seen that morning, he knew what had caused this. Fucking side effects. He’d had all his shots, except for that one. The others in his group had all missed theirs, too. There had to be a reason for that. Fate, maybe. Maybe just coincidence. Either way, none of them had taken Artovax and none of them had been turned.

Not yet.

None of them had been bitten, though, and there was always time for that.

They got out of the truck and walked to the little cabin. The front door was locked.

“Check the windows,” Neil said. “Before we break in, let’s see if we can weasel one open or something.”

“You thinking this is the place?” Butter came up to Neil and stood next to him, hands on hips, looking around the area. He knew Neil wanted a place to call home as much as all the rest of them. They’d been traveling for a month. They were tired.

“Seems as good as any,” he commented. He ran a hand through his hair. Long. It was longer than he’d had it in years. Eight years in the Air Force and he’d gotten a haircut every three weeks the entire time. Now it had been almost six since his last cut and he felt shaggy and strange. In a world when everything was in chaos, it would be nice to have something stable, something reliable, something dependable he could count on.

“Not visual from the road,” Butter commented, looking around. “And we can put the truck in the barn if we like.”

“It’s not big,” Neil said, turning back to the cabin. “And one story.”

“Don’t matter. We don’t need much room.”

Kari and Cody came over. They had been walking the grounds, looking around the barn and the trees.

“There’s a creek,” Kari said. “I could hear it from over there,” she pointed to the trees on the north side of the property. “Fresh water, probably. If we’re going to set up house, this could be as good a place as any.”

“We’d have to build a fence,” Butter said. He had been talking about it for weeks: his fence. He wanted a tall one: five feet high, at least. He wanted barbed wire on the top or razor wire, if he could find it. Butter had big dreams for his fence, but Neil didn’t care. Butter could do what he liked.

They heard the sound of a lock sliding and turned around to see Robert standing in the doorway to the cabin, a wide grin on his scarred face. No one had asked Robert where the scar had come from. Neil doubted he would tell them, anyway. Robert was the kind of man who held secrets close to his heart and he would take them to the grave. He didn’t care to hear whatever story Robert had fabricated for do-gooders or curious old women who wanted to know about the handsome man with the broken face, so he left Robert to himself.

“Bathroom window was unlocked,” Robert said. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”