Severed-In the Beginning- Volume One (2 page)

The thing I miss most is electricity. Don’t get me wrong, I miss my parents and my friends. I had a better relationship with my Xbox, though. I remember Mom and Dad fought a lot. I’m pretty sure they signed divorce papers right before everything changed.

I wasn’t popular. I had a few friends and they were good friends. I don’t think any of them survived. We were excited about starting high school. Now, I can’t even get a GED.

That’s all gone now. No more all-night Halo sessions or midnight Friday the 13
^th
marathons. No more
microwaved
corndogs, no hot showers,
no
night lights. I can’t believe I used to sleep with a night light. That was before there were real monsters hiding in the dark.

On the positive side, no more drunken arguments
or sleepovers at Aunt Liz’s
when Dad really got bad. Some say I don’t have any feelings, that I’m as emotionless as the ever consuming dead. I say I lost my parents long before the rest of the world went away. I say my attitude, my lack of emotions, kept me alive.

That changed though, like everything changed.

Now, I’m the responsible one. I have a family. I don’t drink (not that there’s anything to drink except water). We don’t fight. We’re happy to be alive, although the world doesn’t seem too happy to have us.

January 9
^th
-ish

Oh, I met a girl. That’s who I mean when I say “we”. I’m going to try to write in this journal at least once a week. We’ll see how that goes. Today, I’m going to write about Liz. That’s her name, same as my aunt. We’ve been together almost three years now. I’m glad I found her, saved her. I didn’t want to be alone, like Matthew.

Matthew lives two doors down. I think he used to be a famous author, but I never heard of him. All the same, I tell my kids to stay away from him. A lot of people, survivors, went crazy, too much shock. You don’t know about some people these days. I think we’re in good company otherwise. With the exception of Matthew, everybody else here seems normal enough.

January 20
^th

My kids.

Before this happened, I barely started imagining what it would be like to see a girl’s bra. Now, through no fault of my own, I have two girls.
Gladys and Holly.
After I found Liz hiding in a bank vault, we came across the girls in their elementary school cafeteria, eating melted fruit cups. I am still amazed how two eight-year-olds proved more resilient than a school full of teachers. Holly still doesn’t talk though. Gladys says she used to get in trouble for talking too much.

February 8
^th

Before we ran out of gas, I used to hot rod around
Orlando
. I would find a set of keys or an open car. I taught myself how to drive. And I never slowed down for
deadestrians
. Get it?

Somehow, I got it in my head that I needed money to go with my fancy cars. I didn’t have anything to spend it on, but I wanted to hold a handful of hundred dollar bills at least once.

That’s when I found Liz. She decided a bank vault would be safe and closed
herself
in a big one. She was unconscious when I opened the heavy door. She could not tell me how many days she had been in there, but she had basically used up all the oxygen. That didn’t matter to me once she wrapped her arms around my neck and cried on my shoulder. I had never hugged a girl before (that I wasn’t related to). I fell in love instantly. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful. Her silky black hair accented her dark Latin features. She’s three years older than me, but I’m her saviour, her hero.

February 22
^nd

I still don’t like the idea of being close to other humans.
Too many variables.
But now there’s about thirty of us living in a Disney World hotel across the lake from the Magic Kingdom. The city seemed too dangerous, too many dark places for the eaters to hide. We picked up other survivors on the way out of
Orlando
, like Gladys and Holly. Those girls took to me the same way Liz did.

There is one other family, both parents and a son. Jacob is their natural offspring and they didn’t want any more responsibility. Liz promised me she would help with the girls, so we took them. Jacob is almost six years older than the girls and there are no other kids, so we keep Gladys and Holly close to us. We have enough to worry about without a traumatized boy in puberty.

March 13
^th

Living in sight of a theme park isn’t as great as it sounds without electricity. We’ve taken the girls over a couple times, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly.
No rides meant not much fun.

The good thing about our current home is how secluded it is. I think they evacuated places like this in the beginning. It’s surprising how few zombies or humans we see. I always imagined something innate would drive the monsters here automatically. I guess the primal urges override everything else. They go after food right in front of them, but they are not much for searching and hunting. They must not have subconscious or even vague memories. They don’t linger in familiar places. No emotional attachment. They’re less than animals now.

April 3
^rd

I’ve had to make some tough decisions to get us where we are. It’s probably best that I can stay so detached. The others look to me as some kind of leader, even though there are older men, some with military experience. I’m not brave by a long shot, but I think the whole “end of the world” thing made cowards out of a lot of people. No one wants responsibility and they easily defer to anyone that shows the slightest motivation. So, I have had to make the hard choices, like when we left the old lady in Winter Garden.

She had been bit. There was no other choice, but no one wanted to make it. I knew she would turn. She knew she would turn. We left her clinging to her husband’s headstone in the same cemetery that held her parents’ long decayed remains. She forgave me, in private. The others never knew, so they can blame me if it helps them sleep better.

Liz forgave me. That’s all that matters to me.

I woke up this morning from a dream about that old lady. She tried to warn me about something coming, but I saw only sunshine outside.

May 17
^th

Lately, Liz has been asking me to make a baby with her. I tell her we already have a family. She wants a “real” family. She thinks it’s over. It’s only been five years since it started and less than a year since we saw a zombie.

I know it’s not over.

It took maybe only a year to bring the world to a halt. The zombies have had so much more time to multiply and spread. They are out there somewhere.

Something outside is not my real fear.

My real fears are here.

What if something happens to the baby? I hate to say it, but stillborn would be like being born as a zombie. Worse, what if Liz dies delivering the baby and she becomes one of them?

My life would end.

My real fears are about the future.

I love my girls, but sorry Gladys, sorry Holly. I love Liz more. My life would be over if anything happened to her. I’ve killed too many of those monsters and lost too many more to them. I will not be responsible for creating one.

Liz doesn’t see it like that. She thinks we live in the Garden of Eden. She already has a name picked out, but I’m not going to write it down. I’m superstitious, I guess. In five years, I haven’t seen a pregnant woman or a baby. Gladys and Holly are the youngest kids I know and Gladys is about to turn eleven.

I know the world will end if someone doesn’t have a baby, though. Besides, it’s hard to resist the practice.

May 20
^th

I’ve thought about it a little more and know the world will not end. Humans may end, but not the world. Nature keeps going. The Earth keeps spinning. I’ve noticed that the trees seem to be getting bigger. Greener, if that’s possible.

After the big deal I made to Liz about keeping the girls away from Matthew, I went to talk to him. He thinks all the decaying bodies roaming the planet are putting off huge amounts of carbon dioxide. He says that is super-feeding the plants.

I never had a biology or chemistry class, so I didn’t get it. What’s the big deal if the trees and plants grow bigger? He explained that it would put more oxygen into the atmosphere and other things would grow bigger. The things that eat the plants will grow bigger. The whole food chain would be affected. He says that it has been happening for a while now and that he saw an eighteen foot alligator on the east side of the lake last week. I lived in Florida my whole life and the biggest gator I ever heard of was fourteen feet.

That’s big, but I’m not worried about alligators. They stay away from the hotel. He said I should worry about the birds. That didn’t make sense. I thought most of the birds died off back when everything fell apart. He explained the earth had been oxygen rich once before, back in the days of dinosaurs. He says we should worry when the birds come back.

Every morning since then, when I get up, I check the wide, empty parking lot for walkers and then I stare at the sky. Liz caught me this evening and I told her I was watching the sunset. She thinks I’m romantic.

It’s funny how the sun never changes. Regardless of what’s happening down here, the sun still does its own thing. It looks the same now as it did when I was five.

July 12
^th

Haven’t felt like writing, but I have something to write about now.

It happened.

Maybe I did it on purpose, looking back at my last entry. I’m not sure. Matthew would say I’m expressing my right as a human to create. I might say it was an accident. Either way, Liz is starting to show. She says that means she is already at least eight weeks pregnant.

I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

I’ve known for a few days, but I felt putting it on paper would make it too real.

Still, I had something else to write about today.

The first zombie in over a year came stumbling across that huge parking lot that used to be filled with rental cars and RV’s. The creature did not pay attention to the faded yellow lines. It was not coming to feed. It was trying to escape.

Three seagulls, bigger than any I’ve ever seen, circled high in the air. They would swoop down, one at a time, nipping at the walking corpse with their beaks and claws. Even with its eyes pecked out of its skull, the creature kept moving forward, getting closer to the glass doors at the front of the hotel.

We watched the giant birds shred the zombie from the safety of our balconies. At least, we thought we were safe.

The birds were relentless as they cleaned the body down to the bone in several areas. The zombie finally collapsed and stopped moving when one of the gulls easily pecked through the weakened skull and swallowed a large chunk of putrid brain matter.

Either the birds didn’t see us, or they were full. They flew east, hopefully back to the Atlantic coast, far away from us.

Thinking of the Atlantic made me wonder what brought sea birds so far inland. Could those enormous creatures have eaten all of the fish?

February 18
^th

This seemed like good enough news to pick up the journal again.

I’m a father.

We celebrated by roasting a three-horned goat that some of the guys hunted. That’s not the only strange creature we’ve seen these past couple months. There are squirrels the size of my old pet dog, but they are quickly snatched up by the increasing number of birds. Gulls and hawks mostly, but we keep the girls inside when the Sand Hill Cranes come around. Those things can reach the second floor with their incredible necks now. We’ve also seen a few more zombies, but the birds quickly take care of them. They have definitely developed a taste for the dead flesh.