Read What We Left Behind Online
Authors: Peter Cawdron
What We Left Behind
Copyright © Peter Cawdron 2015
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2015
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Dedication
For Sarah
Reading is exploration,
an expedition of the heart.
Chapter 01: Zombie Movies
We don’t talk about what we left behind. The kids do, but the adults don’t, and we teenagers, well, we want to be adults. We’re so desperate to grow up in this crazy world, we pretend we’re adults when we’re not. With all we know about famine and disease and death in the zombie apocalypse, I wonder, what’s the rush?
There’s an unspoken agreement among the teens that it’s not cool to talk about the things we left behind, so I play it safe and don’t say anything. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking about hot running water or the smell of muffins baking in an oven. I think it’s funny, really. We live in a world overrun by zombies, and yet we’re more worried about what someone’s going to think of us than we are about Zee stalking us in the woods. It’s as though opinions matter more than being eaten alive by some crazed inhuman monster. It’s silly, but to me that contradiction is the epitome of human nature. Perhaps emotions are all that separates us from Zee.
“I’m going in the marauders,” David says as a bunch of us teens sit on the edge of a rocky outcrop watching the sun set over the distant hills. Warmth radiates from the rocks as the air temperature drops around us. It’s hard to tell if it’s late summer or early autumn, but the leaves haven’t started changing color yet.
Steve says, “Dad won’t let me off the farms.” He sounds dejected. It’s not his real father, of course. There are only a handful of kids our age that still have biological parents. I do. I’m lucky. Most parents have been assigned by the commune. Steve’s father is keeping him on the farms to keep him alive, but Steve doesn’t see it that way. He’s being told what to do and he doesn’t like it.
“Mom’s teaching me how to use the loom,” Jane says.
I love Jane as a sister, but like the others, she’s too accepting of her fate.
My turn comes to talk about the menial work that’s supposed to define and consume my life for the next forty or fifty years, zombies and bacteria notwithstanding, but I can’t bring myself to say anything. I hate this. Out of everything we left behind, this is the worst of our losses—the freedom to choose. Any response is an admission of defeat in my mind, so I don’t speak up.
I swing my legs back and forth, feeling the rough rock beneath my bare thighs. Looking out across the valley, it’s hard to believe that raising crops and dodging zombies is all there is to life. Birds still fly through the air, singing to each other and chasing insects. Flowers still grow in the meadows. The sun rises. The sun sets, just as it has for billions of years.
Sunsets are cruel, I think. They’re just as beautiful as they’ve always been. It’s as though nature didn’t get the memo. The apocalypse has come, but the natural world hasn’t noticed. I know evolution is cruel and indifferent, but it’s like Earth never even noticed the rise of Homo sapiens, or their fall. Apparently, we won’t be missed. Blood-crazed zombies stalk the land alongside squirrels burying nuts. I think that’s mental.
Smoke drifts from the ruins of the distant city. Someone’s fighting down there. Someone’s dying and in pain, but to us it’s a spectacle, a curiosity. Like my soft bed, my Xbox, my guitar, and my pretty floral dress, they too have been left behind. I feel sorry for them. I hate to think about what’s happening to them. Run, I want to shout, but they’d never hear me. The zombies would, but the people wouldn’t. Zee hears everything.
“What about you, Haze?” Jane asks.
“Huh?” I reply, pretending I wasn’t following the conversation.
“Are you going to join your dad?”
I turn toward her, unsure how to respond.
Steve is sitting on the other side of Jane and David. That’s not his real name, but everyone calls him Steve. His real name is Nathan. Marauders found him buried in the rubble of a gas station on I-75 a couple of years ago. He’d been on the run from Zee for weeks. Damn, running from your own family-turned-zombies, that is sick. It’s no wonder his brain was fried. He had dysentery. His ribs looked like a collapsed tent, with thick canvas draped over sunken tent poles.
If a patrol had seen Steve wandering around in the open, they would have capped him as a Zee, but they found him crying in a cellar. Zee doesn’t cry. Zee doesn’t show any emotion other than rage, so they brought him in. Oh, and he told us his name was Steve. Hi, Steve. Welcome to the commune, Steve. Only Steve wasn’t his name at all. But no one knew that until about six months later when one of his school buddies turned up and started calling him Nathan. Then he was like, oh, yeah, by the way, my name’s Nathan. I shouldn’t have laughed as hard as I did, but Steve was so nonchalant about the whole thing, as though names don’t matter in the apocalypse.
We all thought it was funny as hell. Even Steve laughed, but deep down, I think he had a point. Like life itself, names are given to us by someone else— usually our parents. And yet, over the course of our lives we define our names, and somehow our names define us. Why shouldn’t someone want to change their name when changing their life? For Steve, the commune was a new start so he chose a new name. I think that’s cool.
Steve peers past Jane. He likes me. Jane and David have been going steady for six months now, which is an eternity here in the dark hills.
“Haze?” he asks, reminding me I should be polite and give a damn about other people’s demands on my time. I should answer Jane’s question.
“Dunno,” I reply, as though I have a choice in the crappy job that’ll be the death of any spark of life within me.
We so desperately want to be adults, and yet to be an adult is to be trapped in a world overrun by zombies. At least as teenagers, we have somewhere to go, something to aspire to. When we’re adults, that’s it. Till the ground, work the loom, stand guard on the fence, and raise a family amidst the madness, pretending the apocalypse doesn’t exist. If you’re lucky, you might grow old and die. That’s not exactly what I had in mind for my life. It’s not that I want life to be exciting. Lord knows, being chased by a pack of zombies is excitement enough for one lifetime. I just have this longing for something more. There has to be more to life, even in the midst of so much death.
“Who do you think’s down there?” David asks. He’s a born leader, or so my dad says. At eighteen, David is almost six feet in height. If we were in high school, he’d be a quarterback. He’s got that muscular physique that seems destined to throw the winning pass. David’s pseudo-dad shaves his head to keep the lice at bay, but if David let it grow, he’d look stunning.
“Dunno,” Jane replies, almost as an echo of my earlier comment. She too seems lost in thought.
Jane is a brunette. If we were in high school, she’d be bugging her parents to buy shares in some company that produces peroxide. Just a little bleach, and she looks like a natural blonde. She’s got high cheekbones and a thin frame. I can just see her as a cheerleader bouncing around on the sideline as David rushes the defense, weaving his way between oncoming linebackers to score the winning touchdown.
“Sad,” is all Steve can say about the fighting down there in the city.
Sad is a word out of context. Typical Steve, really. Like David, his hair is cut short to avoid the lice. For some reason, we girls can sidestep the need for a buzz cut, but only so long as we keep our hair pulled back tight in a ponytail. Let it flow, and the lice will come. I’m not sure how they find us, but, like zombies, they’re always lurking around the next corner.
Steve has a fresh scar running down the side of his face, extending from the corner of his eye to just above his chin. He got careless during the harvest. His shirt caught on the mechanical harvester and he was dragged into the machine and was torn up pretty bad. He’s lucky. No infection. The scar on his face is still a little raw. It’s pinkish, but not red. If it were red, he’d be dead. We all know what red means—bacteria under the skin. Even with his scar, Steve is cute, in a geeky kinda way. If we were in high school, I’m sure we’d date. Maybe. Who knows? There are so many what-ifs in a world consumed by zombies, but we’re alive, and that’s what matters.
“Why would anyone go down there?” Jane asks, her eyes looking into the distance at the glowing fires in the city. The sun has set. The cool of night falls along with the darkness. It won’t be long now. Zee will be coming. Zee always comes. From where we sit, we can see the night watch with their rifles. They’re walking along the trails beside the chain-link fence waiting for Zee.
No one answers Jane, so I say, “For love.”
“Love?” David asks with his quarterback voice sounding too gruff and mean to seriously consider such a concept.
“There’s no other reason,” I reply. “Why would anyone go into a hive if it wasn’t for love?”
“I don’t get you, Haze,” Jane says. “Love might work miracles in the movies, but not in real life.”
Steve’s silent. I think he knows. I’m not talking about that soppy romantic love that leaves tears running down my cheeks, but the love of a mother for her daughter, or the love of a best friend for his fallen buddy. Steve’s been there. His eyes say so.
“They’re crazy,” David says, watching as the countryside slips into darkness.
The trees, so distinct just moments ago, blend together into a black mass in the twilight. As our eyes adjust to the darkness, the shadows come alive, but it’s just the wind in the leaves, I tell myself. There’s nothing to worry about. Yet.
A large fireball billows into the sky above the ruins of the distant city. We used to see things like that all the time, but these days they’re rare. Someone’s really giving it to Zee, but the fireball fades and the night wins. Darkness descends. For me, it’s strange to see a battle played out in silence. Finally, a distant boom drifts by on a gentle breeze.
“Don’t you wonder about the future?” I ask. “I mean, will life always be like this?”
“Nah,” David says, but I know the future he’s thinking about. He’s thinking of serving on the front line, and the occasional raid into the cities. The accepted wisdom is to hunker down and wait for Zee to rot, only it’s a strategy that doesn’t seem to be working. We grow weaker, while Zee grows in strength and numbers.
“Will we ever go back?” I ask.
“No,” David replies, but I’d like to hear what Steve thinks, or Jane. It seems they agree with David. Either that or they don’t want to contradict him.
“I’d like to go back.”
We’re not supposed to talk like this. We’re supposed to be accepting of the commune, but I can’t help myself. If I can’t be honest with my friends, what’s the point? Life without honesty is hell on Earth. I think it’s worse than any zombie apocalypse. Why go through this harsh life if there’s no chance of redemption? I don’t really care about my Xbox, but it was fun to spend a lazy Sunday morning chasing pirates around virtual seas. I care about being me. I don’t want to live like a bird trapped in a cage.
