LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (13 page)

Up to the second floor, I climb. I struggle, stopping halfway up the flight of carpeted stairs to catch my breath and then once more continue on my journey. I clamber up the steps and walk back into the little greenhouse that Jason set up in what I’m assuming was his fiancée’s old room. Untying the rope from across my chest, I admit defeat. There is no way that I’m going to be able to carry three gallons of water across the wasteland. Opening the first gallon of water, I generously water as many plants in their tiny pots of dirt that I can. I don’t know if they’ll survive without constant care, but I can only hope. I finish watering the rest of the plants with my second gallon of water and what’s left, I pour onto the carpet. I take the third gallon of water and do the same, pouring everything onto the carpet before discarding the jugs.

Once in the basement, I grab a shovel and decide that it’s time to go bury my new friends next to their dog Barney out in the dead yard. I pull the old shovel off of its hook on the wall and I approach the cellar doors, pulling the sliding bar back and pushing open the door, taking the steps with great pain. Outside in the sunlight, I squint, blinded by the burning white. Before my eyes can adjust I hear something that alarms me. It’s a sort of tearing, munching sound. Quickly I blink, trying to regain my vision. When it finally comes, I see what it is that’s making the sounds and I feel my already weak stomach quiver.

Zombies.

It was the gunshot. I have no doubt about it in my mind as I see them while I stand motionless, staring in horror at what they are doing. I have no comprehension of what I am seeing. Where did they come from? Were they in Dayton? If they were in Dayton and heard the gunshot, how in the hell did they pinpoint the sound to this house? At the moment, nothing seems to matter except that they’re here and that they’re feeding on the corpses of those who I had come to respect.

There are four of the things. Three of them are digging into Jason. One of them is working his way down Jason’s arm after feeding on his bloody shoulder. It’s a woman who is chewing the sinew and tissue of his deltoid. She takes a bite out of his bicep, sinking her fetid, black teeth into the skin, latching on and pulling her mouthful of human flesh free, pulling at Jason’s skin as she rips it away. Another is chewing on his face, naked and hunkered over his head like a dog, biting into his cheek and gnawing at his cheekbone as he grips Jason’s head with blackened fingers coated with hardened, sun-burned gore. The last one is biting into Jason’s thigh, taking his time as he ponders the mouthfuls, staring at the others as they eat. I almost wonder if this one is new to the whole cannibalism route, or at least the raw cannibalism route. They growl at each other like dogs, watching one another with greedy, suspicious eyes.

The final creature is feeding on the girl’s long, graceful neck, her mouth still open as she stares with half-closed eyes at the sky. It’s a woman that’s eating her neck, pulling out long arteries and veins with her teeth. It’s sickening as the creature starts digging her fingers into the girl’s throat, searching for something tasty and delicious for herself. All of it is so repulsive that I can hardly stand it. I’m thankful that they weren’t captured alive, but at the same time I feel a sense of overwhelming fury at the monsters for eating people that I regret killing.

No regrets,
I remind myself. I want to close the cellar doors in an attempt to protect everything that they have worked so hard to create and salvage, but there’s no time. I need to get out of here. I don’t like my odds with four of the creatures and just myself. Even with the shovel, I’m dangerously outnumbered and those things can move quickly if they want to. I don’t have the confidence in myself that I can take them, especially with a wounded arm and damaged ribs. So I slowly walk away. I take one cautious, determined step away from them, trying to skirt their little feeding frenzy before they notice me. It’s so easy at first that I wonder if they’re blind. I notice they don’t blink as often as I do, almost as if they are turning into animals.

As if they could sense my thoughts, two of them turn and stare right at me with their cold, vacant eyes, void of any sort of thought or emotion. The only thing that’s present in those eyes is hunger, like a permanent resident inside those bloodshot orbs. It’s the two girl creatures that see me, and both of them start to gargle this low, guttural sound that makes a chill run down my spine, like two dogs that are about to charge and attack me. Gripping the shovel with both hands, I’m ready for whatever’s about to come. That’s a lie, but I tell myself that I have to survive. I think of the girls and tell myself that dying is not an option. I have to survive. I have to endure.

The two men have caught on as well to the fact that I’m here. They look over their shoulders at me with the same possessed stare that has captivated the others. With their eyes locked on me, they slowly rise in the most peculiar way, as if gravity is tugging at their arms and it’s their backs that are propelling them upwards. They stare at me with tilted, gaunt heads, watching me with their gluttonous eyes. The one who charges me first is the girl who was feeding on Jason’s fiancée. With pleasure I intercept her with the shovel. I thrust it outwards like a spear, catching her in the bony chest, feeling the collapse of her sternum and brittle bones as she crumples around the head of the shovel. Before I can rip the shovel out of her, the other three have descended, but not on me. While she is still chirping and wheezing through collapsed lungs, the three survivors begin ripping pieces out of her with their broken, jagged teeth and gnarled fingers. I drop the shovel and back away quickly, watching in horror as they consume her while she shrieks in agony.

I turn to run and I don’t look back. I run south, abandoning them without a care or worry. Jason and his beautiful fiancée were dead. The dead don’t care if they’re buried. The only thing that they care about is vengeance and that would mean that I would need to die. I’m not into that at the moment, so I head toward Dayton. I can’t see the city from where I am now, but I know that I’m heading in the right direction. From the second story window, this was the way. It’s a little over an hour before I start to see buildings on the horizon and thanks to Jason, I know where I am, so I begin to adjust my course to keep the city on the horizon while I move around it. I walk until I see the sunset sink into the horizon and with every few minutes, I stop and look behind me, just to make sure that my primordial, cannibalistic trackers are nowhere to be seen. Once more, I thank Jason’s fiancée for killing herself… sarcastically, of course. Deep down inside, I am overly bitter when I think about the fact that she might be here with me, if she hadn’t been so foolish. But then again, what would I have done if I’d watched someone murder Tiffany?

I had, though. I had watched breast cancer kill the woman I loved more than anything in the world and when she was lowered into the earth, I didn’t put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. Sure, I’d thought about it—what widower hasn’t? But I didn’t and truth be told, I had the courage to keep on living. I don’t blame her for missing Jason, but seriously? The world needs good people now more than ever and I’m not a good person, but with someone with me to keep me balanced, who knows, maybe I could come back. Maybe.

No, a voice inside my head prods. If Jason’s fiancée had survived then she probably would have made me accountable for the despicable actions that the end of the world demands of me, and I can’t have that. Also, she was a walking liability. A beautiful woman? Come on, who needs that when everything roaming this earth now is judging the merits of things based on if they can fuck it or eat it. I have to think of the girls. They are my priority, not my soul-crushing loneliness. If I get a companion, it better be a man with a simple, straightforward understanding of what it is I need to do and preferably, once it’s done, he walks away into the sunset, never to be seen again. I’m better off without Jason’s fiancée and she’s better off without me. If I come across another beautiful woman and she truly is the last beautiful woman on the planet who somehow deeply desires to walk with me all the way to Florida, the answer will still and always be no. The vulnerability that comes with a female companion is too much responsibility.

I come across a small neighborhood and decide to avoid it in the pale moonlight of the night. There’s no trusting anything in this world anymore. Nighttime excursions are for cautious people looking to avoid predators. I’ve noticed that the feral Zombies are moving during the daylight hours too, which means that they’re catching onto the nocturnal travelers, trying to catch them while they sleep. This is an insidious and horrifying prospect and I wonder how safe I am on foot while traveling on the road. The first car I come across, I try the door handle. It’s locked. I need to find some transportation. If I’m asleep in a car, I’ll be more inclined to survive—or so I think.

I walk the small road that I’ve found for a few miles until Dayton is starting to move on the horizon, shifting to the west. I’m making progress and as I keep moving, I realize that I need to find somewhere to hunker down until the daytime is over. I have a few hours until dawn and I’m weary, like I’ve been stretched too far for too long, luckily, I’m rationing my water. I’ve only had a single bottle, which isn’t healthy, but I need to ration it. There’s no knowing when I’ll find another source. I stuff the bottle back into my pink backpack and continue walking along the road.

Completely unaware of where I am, I decide to make my shelter for the coming day in a semi-truck that’s parked in the back of a parking lot along a concrete wall that stands around eight feet high. I try for the handle and am truly surprised that it’s unlocked. Drawing my knife, I search the bed in the back of the cab, smelling something that is reminiscent of very old, very rancid beer. To be honest, I’ve smelled worse over the course of my journey and decide that this is definitely something that I can endure. I quickly rush to the far end of the parking lot where I see a cluster of dented, heavily beat up cars and take a piss before stuffing myself into the cab of a truck for an entire day.

Once back at the truck, I climb in and lock the doors, cracking one of the windows to keep the air circulating just a little. I smell the blankets in the back of the truck, picturing a fat, greasy trucker wrapped up naked in them on his long haul from Nebraska to God-knows-where. I decide that I don’t really care. I curl up along the back wall of the cab bed and stare out the front window into the darkness, watching for signs of life or any movement in general. I don’t know where I am, but I can see the silhouette of an enormous building at the far end of the parking lot. Part of me suspects that it’s the airport, but I can’t remember where it was on the map of Dayton. I just remember that it’s on the outskirts of the town.

At some point, I fall asleep through the dawn and when I awake, I do so with a shudder that startles me into full alertness. I’m staring at a gray, large building with a blue stripe on the outside. Part of me smiles and the other part of me stares in disbelief at what I’ve found. I know that there is little to no hope that the place hasn’t been completely ransacked, but as I stare at it, I can’t help but feel like a little piece of the old world has come back to the new one. The word written across the face of the building’s first entrance is Mal-Mart. I look over to the second entrance and see another sign that makes me feel even more nostalgic. It reads: Mal-Mart & MacDonald’s. I hated both of those places back when the world was fine and I was allowed to hate things such as fast food and megastores, but now, I almost relish the sight of them.

I watch the store for half an hour at least, keeping my eyes open for signs of life. I’m answered by just one person at first. It’s a man, walking slowly across the front of the store, making his way between the cars with no real goal or intention visible. I’m not sure what to make of the man until he gets a little closer. I notice the black cocktail of blood and dust smeared across his lips and chin as he looks my direction with wide, bloody eyes. He is entirely coated in the dust as well, as if he was caught out in one of the sandstorms once upon a time and had never cleaned himself off. His sleeves are torn and I can see his soiled hands, the fingers bent like claws as they reached out and touched every car he passed.

I look out the side windows of the truck and see that I’m next to a small strip mall with a spa and video game store inside of them. I’ve got a full parking lot between me and the Mal-Mart. Part of me knows that it’s a long shot, but I feel the cramping in my stomach and I know that I need something, soon. If I don’t find something to eat, my water won’t do me much good. But as I look at the store, more and more of the Zombies start shuffling out from the terminus of the eight-foot high wall. I stopped counting at eight. I figure there must be some sort of nest or warren back in the buildings beside the megastore where they bed down for the night. Even the mindless horrors need to sleep. I wonder why those who have hunkered down and set up camp for good here don’t burn them out or kill them while they sleep. It seems like it would be worth it, even if it’s a little risky.

From my vantage point, I’m trapped. Over a dozen Zombies have come stumbling out from behind the wall, sniffing the air and searching with half blind eyes for something to eat. On the far end of the Mal-Mart, I see others walking out in the streets, lurking and hunting for survivors. How are there so many? I don’t understand how there can be so many. There is an infestation here in Dayton. The deeper I probe into the town, the more I know I’ll find, but hunger compels me. I will wait until sunset and as they stumble back to their homes, their festering nests, I’ll take a look.

I keep seated, watching them with disturbed fascination. Most of them wander through the parking lot, their eyes moving from vehicle to vehicle, hunting for something to eat. Some of them burst into furious rage, banging the sides and hoods of cars as they shriek against their starvation. Slowly they make their way to the far side of the asphalt lot and before I realize it, the entire expanse is empty. It gives me a rare opportunity. Now is my chance to act.

Slowly I open the door and slip down the steps of the truck, gently resting the door closed and looking around the strip mall parking lot to make sure that I’m alone. God, I hate the towns and cities. There’s nowhere safe. Pulling my knife free from my belt, I keep low, creeping around the side of the semi-truck before darting to a minivan. Dropping down onto my chest, I scan the underbellies of the nearby cars, making sure there aren’t any feet standing, waiting for me. I half expect to see another face looking at me with bloodshot eyes and blackened gore around the lips and chin, but there’s none of that, no horror movie business.

I scramble back to my feet and dart to the next car, keeping low and searching all around before making my way from vehicle to vehicle. I’m terrified of the large gap between the strip mall and the majority of the cars in the Mal-Mart parking lot. I gauge it at fifty yards of open territory—enough distance for a Zombie to see me or a sniper to pick me off. Taking in a deep breath, I decide that it’s worth it and make the run. Stopping behind a Chevy, I plant my hands on the side of the vehicle and listen, waiting for the sounds of footsteps or the inevitable gunshot. When nothing happens, I continue working my way between cars, stopping and checking underneath them for footsteps and above them for distant dangers.