Alone (3 page)

Chapter 3

Tony’s eyes opened as the loud sound of rain pounded on the tin roof of the warehouse. He felt thankful he didn’t wake up today wet from sweating. It wasn’t as hot as it had been the last few mornings. In fact, today he actually felt chilly.

The cool air actually felt good. He pulled the sleeping bag up over his body and enjoyed the warm feeling as he relaxed. He enjoyed the coolness of the air but hoped it wasn’t a sign that winter was coming early this year. He hated the cold. The last winter’s frigid air had been unbearable. Hopefully the next winter would be different, especially if he stayed in the warehouse. He would have a lot of things to burn for heat and he wouldn’t have to worry about the smoke giving away his hiding place. The zombie’s already knew he was here.

But he knew he had a least a few months before he had to worry about winter again.

He was sure he would be waking up a sweaty mess many more times before the weather began to change.

Tony stretched when his stomach started to growl. He thought how it was funny how his stomach growled every morning. He didn’t remember his stomach growling during the many months he had lived with barely enough to eat. Now that he ate constantly all day long, his stomach growled to let him know it wanted more.

Tony slid to the edge of his inflated raft and sat up.

“Why fight it?” He smiled. “Things had a way of ending fast. I don’t know how long my good fortune will last, so while I have plenty of food, I am going to eat.”

He knew you always had to plan for tomorrow but there was no use saving too much food for tomorrow when he had access to so much of it. Tomorrow may never come.

Tony got up and opened his door to look down and survey the floor of the warehouse. When he was sure all was as he expected, he climbed down to find breakfast.

Before going to the food shelves, he walked to the left front corner of the warehouse.

He could hear the water running before he reached the bucket.  During his first week in the warehouse, one day when it was raining he heard water running through a pipe. Upon further inspection he found a down spout coming down the inside wall of the warehouse. He removed the bottom elbow and set a bucket under the open end of the pipe. Now whenever it rained he had fresh water.

It must have rained most of the night. His five gallon bucket was over flowing.  He moved the bucket and slid an empty bucket under the pipe to take the place of the full bucket.

He bent down and took a long sip of the water.

It tasted great. When he was a kid, he always preferred to drink juice or Coke instead of water. Now that all he had to drink was juices and energy drinks, he preferred water to the taste of juice. He felt amazed again at how things had changed.

Tony watched as the second bucket began to fill.

He walked over towards the area where the long inactive forklifts and other equipment sat and picked up two more buckets.

With the loud pounding of the rain on the warehouse roof, he was hopeful he could fill up another two buckets. With any luck, Tony thought he would get enough water this morning that he could wash up. It had been days since he had last washed himself and he was beginning to smell pretty bad.  The thought of getting cleaned up felt exciting.

He had set aside a clean set of clothes for when he was able to get cleaned up. A bright blue pair of jogging pants and a blue Patriot’s football jersey sat on the bottom of the fourth shelf from the back, along with a pair of clean underwear.

Tony placed the next bucket under the drain pipe and moved the full bucket aside. He took a smaller one gallon bucket and scooped out a small bucket of water.

He picked up and unwrapped a clean wash cloth he had taken from the shelves filled with bathroom items and began to wash up.

He dried off with a clean towel and changed into the new clothes. He then stood back and looked himself over.  He felt great being in clean clothes again, but when the time came for him to go outside of the warehouse, he would have to change into something a little less bright. He would stand out like a chicken in a wolf exhibit at the zoo dressed like this. He would have to see if there were some camouflage suits in with the sporting good supplies. But for now these would do.

He picked up the electric razor he had been using the last week, but the battery didn’t have enough power left to shave. He tossed the razor in the corner with the other three that had gone dead and opened a new boxed razor. After a year’s time, the batteries in the new electric razors didn’t last more than a couple of hours. He had another twenty boxes of new razors to go through before he would have to start using regular blade razors. He had hundreds of replacement blades for those razors, but he enjoyed the idea of using the electric shavers while they lasted.

He guessed it was because they gave him a little of his old life to hang on to.

Now that he was cleaned up, Tony went back to the food shelves and selected a box of sugar wafers and a bottle of cherry juice for his breakfast.

He was half way through the pack of wafers when he stopped and twisted around to look at the label in the back of his new jogging pants.  Size thirty-six. He smiled. For as long as he could remember he had worn size thirty-four.

He thought and then smiled. “Maybe I should start eating items from the health food shelves for a while.”

He laughed to himself as he finished his sugar wafers and drank the last of the cherry juice.

When he was done with breakfast, he dipped his Pirate mug in the bucket of fresh water and took a long drink of water to wash the sweet taste from his mouth.

He slid the last empty bucket under the drain pipe.

The water was now running out of the pipe at a slow drip.

He stood back and looked at the three full buckets. He had enough water to last him a week or more.

He took one more long drink of the cool water. Water always tasted good, but never as good as when he first collected it. It would be warm the next time he got a drink. It always tasted so fresh and cool when he first filled the bucket.

Tony sat his mug next to the buckets and headed for the sporting good shelves. He picked up another two boxes of pellets and started to climb back up to the office.

Now that he was clean and his stomach was full, he hoped he would be able to be more patient with his shots at the dead.

“It would be good if I could maybe take out forty or more of them today.” He thought.  He would try not to waste so many shots at Farmer George today.

He climbed the rungs up to the office and went inside. Today he brought an aluminum lawn chair up to the office with him. He had slung it over his right arm before he started his climb. The chair was light but it was awkward climbing with the chair moving around on his arm. It was difficult climbing and he thought about letting it drop back down to the warehouse floor a few times. He held on and finally managed to get it with him to the top. He slid it onto the ledge and climbed up after it.

He took the chair and sat it near the corner of the window after unfolding it. The plastic slats were comfortable and Tony sat for a while and enjoyed the comfort of the chair before getting down to business.

Finally he picked up his pellet gun and dumped half the box of pellets into the gun. He looked down from his window and picked out his first target.

He began firing. Thup! Thup! Thup!

He aimed carefully each time before he fired. He took his time today. He tried to keep a mental count of the number of targets that had gone down. He lost count at around thirty-five. With the number of the dead lying in the mud from yesterday, it was too hard to try to recount how many of the dead he had eliminated today. He however felt that he had made good progress today.

Tony had finished off both boxes of pellets and propped the gun against the wall next to the window.

He leaned back in the soft plastic slats of the chair and relaxed.

He thought how strange it was that he was able to relax with so much death around him and after all the horror he had seen. He wondered if there was something wrong with him. How could he sit here and feel good about himself with all the death around him?

But he let go of those thoughts. What other choice did he have? Sitting around feeling miserable would not make the world change back. It was what it was. His only options were to go on or to die. Life was shit, but he wasn’t ready to die just yet. He had a plan. Things were good for him now, or at least they were better than it had been.

Considering what had happened, he couldn’t have wished for much more.

Tony sat back and studied the hills around him. He couldn’t see much. The clearing around the warehouse extended for about three hundred feet, beyond that he couldn’t see much for the trees that surrounded the clearing. The warehouse was hidden back in this small wooded area, probably that was why he had never known that it had existed before he stumbled on it when he was trying to escape the mob of dead from the mall.

The clouds were beginning to clear and the sun began to peek out from behind them. Rays of sunlight began to glisten off the wet leaves at the far end of the clearing.

It was a pleasant view after having spent so much time looking at rows of tall shelves in the dark halls of the warehouse. It would be nice to go out there and walk around and smell the fresh air and the smell of ozone in the air after the rain. It would be nice to smell flowers again along with the strong odor of freshly cut grass.

All the little things he had taken for granted before.

Tony studied the edge of the tree line. Suddenly he sat up in his chair and looked intently.

He swore something had moved. He watched the brush near the end of the clearing. It moved again.

“Could it be a zombie?” He thought. “No. There would be nothing out there that would be of interest to a zombie.”

“Maybe it was a deer?” His thoughts wondered. “Deer still ate grass and the zombies so far as he knew had little interest in wild animals.”

Tony continued to watch. Whatever it was, Tony watched with interest. He hadn’t seen any other living creatures for a long time. He would be happy to see a deer. He was surprised that he hadn’t seen any dogs for months. After a couple of months, all the dogs had seemed to vanish. He hoped it was because they were smart enough to run into the mountains. He hoped it wasn’t because someone or something had eaten them. He had always liked dogs. If it was a dog out there in the brush, it would be nice if he could save it somehow. But how? Outside of the warehouse he was lucky if he could save himself.

Tony jumped to his feet as he saw another movement in the brush.

He turned and ran out of his office room and climbed down to the floor of the warehouse. He ran back to the shelves that held the sporting goods and began to pull boxes off the shelves until he found the box he was looking for. He opened the package and pulled out a pair of binoculars. He hung them over his neck and rushed back up to his room.

He held them to his eyes as he studied the edge of the clearing.

He saw the top of the brush move again.

He focused the lens so he could see more clearly.

His heart started pounding when he saw an arm reach out and grab a handful of wild raspberries and then disappear back into the brush.

“There is another person out there!” he said to himself. He didn’t know who or what that person was, but it was the first sighting of another living person he had had since his friends.  A sad feeling entered his thoughts briefly as he remembered the tragic end his friends had endured. But his feeling of hope soon overtook his sad thoughts.

He watched as the arm reached out and picked more of the raspberries.

“I have to make contact!” he thought as he frantically looked around the room. “I have to let them know I’m here.”

Tony spotted his bow and arrows lying on the floor in the corner. He quickly grabbed an arrow. He reached under his sleeping bag and took out his pad and pen. He tore off the last sheet of paper and wrote, “Hi, my name is Tony!”

He took two granola bars out of the box next to his bed and taped the bars and the note to the end of the arrow. He would like to put the entire box on the arrow but then he would have no chance of getting the arrow out to where he had seen the arm. He wasn’t sure the arrow would make it with the two bars attached.

He picked up the binoculars and looked over the area where he had seen the arm picking berries. It was about five minutes later when he saw the arm once again reach out and take more berries.

He looked around for a target. He had been practicing with the bow in the warehouse, but he wasn’t sure how much good that had done him. He spotted a tree about ten feet from the berry patch He hoped that would be a big enough target. He also hoped the arrow wouldn’t drift to the left and strike the person he was trying to make contact.

Tony stood at the window and pulled back on the bow. He aimed high in the air to try to give the arrow a high enough trajectory to travel the entire distance to the edge of the clearing.  He pulled the string back as far as he could until the granola bars scraped against the bow.