Find Me (Life After the Outbreak, Book 2) (21 page)

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting to wake up from this nightmare.

I felt around in the dark and found the lantern next to the bed. I was in my old bedroom, or at least my post-zombie-apocalypse bedroom. My mind wandered to the last time I was in my actual bedroom, and a twinge of guilt and pain flashed through me. I would have given anything to be able to hit a rewind button and go back to that day.

I heard the water running from across the hall and I hopped from the bed to check it out. It was probably Dan, but I wasn't about to take any chances so I brought my knife, just in case.
 

The door was open just a crack. A yellow glow spilled into the hall lighting it just enough to see my feet. One good thing about living in a basement, the floors were cement, so creaky floorboards were never an issue. I inched closer and held my breath until I saw Dan's reflection in the bathroom mirror to confirm it was actually him.

"Andi?" He turned to catch me peeking through the door at him and pushed it open. "If you wanna watch, just say so." He winked, and I felt my face grow hot.

"I wasn't watching."

"Of course not." He held back a laugh.

"I was just making sure it was you … and not a dream or something."

He glanced down at the knife in my hand and frowned. "You were totally wiped so I moved you to the bedroom. That couch sucks to sleep on."

"Have you been staying here the whole time?"

"Nah." He picked up a razor that used to belong to my dad and started shaving the scruffy tangle of hair off his face. "Last couple of weeks. I came back to see if you guys made it back here and well, let's face it, this is a damn good place to stay. Can't imagine why you ever left here in the first place."

The razor slid over his skin revealing a smooth chin and cheeks with just a hint of pink from the old blade. He lathered on more foamy cream that wasn't native to the basement. He must have brought that with him. When I was little, my father used to sit me up on the bathroom counter while he shaved and listen to me babble on about princesses and ponies. It was one of my favorite times of the day.

Dan turned and looked at me with one eyebrow raised. "Still with me?"

I blinked a couple times and came back to the present. "Yeah, sorry I was just remembering my Dad."

"I so hope I don't remind you of him." Dan laughed and dabbed shaving cream on my nose.

I rolled my eyes and wiped the cream on his shirt. "Uh, no."

"So why did you leave here?"

"I left because it was too hard to stay." That was exactly the truth. "After I lost my parents and the others we were down here with, it was just too painful. Honestly, I didn't think I'd ever be able to come back."

"So why did you?" Dan finished shaving and wiped his face onto a washcloth.
 

"The day I met Will, I don't know, we needed a place to stay and we were close. It didn't seem so bad coming back with someone else as it did being here alone."

"That makes sense. What are your plans now?" He flipped off the light and led me toward the kitchen.

"To find Will." No matter what.

Dan opened a couple cans and poured them into a pot to heat on a small camp stove on the counter. "The stove crapped out about a week ago."

I nodded, surprised it actually lasted that long.

Dan rifled through his backpack, pulled out some crackers, and set them on the table with some bowls. "Anyway, finding Will is a given. I meant, what are your plans to do that? We should probably have an idea about how we plan to go about looking."
 

"I hadn't really thought about it. I figured I'd get here first and then decide what to do. After Janet …” My stomach twisted, and the idea of food no longer seemed so great. "I just … I couldn't think anymore."

Dan spooned the food into the bowls and sat down at the table. "You were calling out her name in your sleep. I thought you two hated each other?"

Great, I still talk in my sleep
.

"We spent a lot of time together at the base." Tears threatened, and I held them back. "We got really close … like sisters." The harder I fought to keep my emotions in check, the larger the lump in my throat grew until I could no longer swallow.
 

Dan hooked his foot under my chair and pulled it closer. He stroked my arm in an effort to comfort me, but it only made me want to break down more. Janet would tell me to stop being a crybaby and grow up. I could almost hear her in my head saying just that.

"You're acting like an immature child, Andi. Suck it up and deal with it. This is life now."

I couldn't help but laugh at the thought. There was a time I would have hated her for saying those things, but as I got to know her, I knew it was for my own good. She was right. I did need to grow up and get my shit together. Thanks to her, I actually had a chance to survive. I thought I was doing okay before, and maybe I was, but okay just wasn't good enough.
 

Dan lifted my face up and gave me a strange look. "Are you laughing?"

Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I laughed again. I knew I must have looked a little crazy, or maybe a lot crazy, but I couldn't help it.
 

Dan sighed and pulled me against him. It didn't matter if I was nuts. I knew he would still be there.
 

Part of me wanted to take a day and just sleep, read, or do something other than pack up some supplies and head back out into the world. Maybe if the world wasn't full of flesh eating undead, who wanted nothing more than to devour everything with a pulse, and the survivors, who would just as easily stab you in the heart and take whatever you had, it would be a different story.
 

The rest of me knew I needed to get back out there as soon as possible. Every day that passed made it less likely that I would find Will at all, much less still breathing.
 

Dan's looks of pity quickly turned to determination. I thought he may have wanted to find Will for me even more than I wanted to find him myself, and I wanted to find him more than anything at that moment. I didn't want anyone else to risk their life looking for him, but I wasn't about to turn down the help.
 

I knew I'd have better luck at any sort of chance to find Will with help, but the truth was, I was grateful for the companionship. There was a time when I enjoyed the solitude, the quiet. Sure, it was difficult to find a safe moment to sleep and doing so meant the possibility of waking up with teeth wrapped around your arm or leg, but there was no one to worry about. No one to lose.

Of course, I was just fooling myself. That first day I met Will, I knew what I was missing. Dan was no Will, but having him with me was so much better than being alone. I just hoped that I wouldn't be losing him too. At least no time soon.
 

"You ready to get moving?" Dan bumped into me with his shoulder in an attempt to be playful.
 

I took a deep breath and glanced around the basement. Every time I walked out the door I knew it could be for the last time, so I tried to take everything in. "Sure." I wasn't excited about going, but it had to be done.
 

Dan put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. "We are going to find him, sweetheart. I promise you."

There was something about Dan that made it easy to believe him. Even in the screwed up world we lived in, I could take him for his word. We would find Will.

I nodded, and out the door we went. I wanted to take a peek around my old house, but shoved back the urge. If we made it back there, I would look around then. I couldn't help but hold on to that little piece of who I used to be. I knew I needed to let it go and move on. Maybe one last look around would help with that.

Dan walked with a little more purpose than usual, keeping his bow up in defense to protect us. "So, tell me about the military base. Were the streets paved with gold and lined with trees covered in cotton candy?"

"Absolutely. And we had filet mignon and fresh veggies every night for dinner and slept on fluffy clouds that floated down rivers of caramel. It was awesome."

"I figured." Dan nudged me with his elbow and motioned with his head toward two flesh eaters walking past some cars up ahead. They were in bad shape, stumbling and bumping into one another. It wasn't even possible to tell if they were male or female at that point. Their clothes were ripped to shreds, and what little skin was left on them was falling off in hunks as the bounced off each other.
 

"Put them out of their misery?" I asked and pulled the knife from my belt.

Dan nodded. "Assuming they even feel misery."
 

"I'm not sure whether I hope they do or don't. I want to think they do. They deserve to feel something for all the misery they cause, but then, well, they don't. Ya know?"

"Yeah." Dan sighed. "It's not their fault what happened to them. I would like to get my hands on the ones who are responsible for it though. Now that's who deserves misery."

Dan stopped and held his arm in front of me to keep me there while we waited for our approaching friends to catch up. The one on the right tripped over a pothole in the road and fell, losing one of its legs in the process. It looked confused, then tried to push itself along with its arms. The other didn't seem to notice and kept hobbling in our direction.

Dan dropped his arm and stepped ahead. "I got two-legs. You take the other?"

"No problem." I walked over to the thing, almost completely devoid of flesh from scraping along the asphalt. It looked up at me and moaned. The pathetic sound seemed to beg me to finish it off. I kicked at it, and the jaw came unhinged. It wouldn't be able to bite me if it tried, but it still had one working arm and I didn't need to get scratched by that thing.
 

"Are you playing with it or killing it?" Dan called over, finished with two-legs, as he called it.
 

"I was thinking we could use it for kickball, but it's a little deflated. What do you think?"

Dan walked up and glanced down at the thing. It hissed and tried to reach out for his leg. "I think you need to ditch those Converse for some steel-toed boots first or you're going to be joining the opposing team."

“Oh, fine." I huffed. "Ruin all the fun." I bent down and pushed the knife into its brain. Thick black sludge oozed onto the road. I stepped back to avoid getting any on my sneakers. Not that I hadn't had zombie guts on me before, but I preferred to avoid it when possible.
 

Dan took the knife from me and wiped it off on a scrap of old flannel shirt he had with him, then handed it back. "I would think Janet would have you in boots and camo by now, after what you told me."

"Not like she didn't try. I can live without hot showers, refrigerated food, and no sense of a future, but no one is going to take my sneakers and hoodies. A girl has got to have limits, ya know."

"So everything else can go then?" He glanced down at my pants and smiled.
 

I knew exactly what he was thinking, and of course, my cheeks flared with heat at the realization. Dan was a flirt. It was nothing unexpected, but it still caught me off guard. I was used to dealing with high school boys and their pathetic attempts at flirting. Dan was no high school boy.
 

"Don't be an dork." I punched him in the arm and started walking again.
 

"I might be an dork," he said, letting his full accent through. "But, you are adorable."

I rolled my eyes, more to myself than him because I knew he couldn't see me. That accent would get the attention of any girl, and I was no exception, but it wasn't the time to flirt. "Something about zombie killing that gets you hot?"

"Nope." He jogged ahead and matched my faster than usual pace. "It's just you."

"I do not get hot killing zombies, I can assure you of that." I huffed.

He laughed. "Good to know."

We spent the next few hours covering a section on the map we both decided would be best to start with. Dan knew a place we could spend the night that was about twenty-five miles out. It would be a long day, but a few days like that and we would be able to cover any likely areas Will could have gone, or even wandered if things hadn't turned out so well.
 

Flesh eaters tended to hobble around aimlessly, unless they heard or smelled food, and even then, they didn't get far fast. If that was Will's fate, he probably didn't get very far. I hated to think about Will being dead, but I had to face that it was a very real possibility. I had to find him, no matter what it was I found.

Dan was his usual talkative self the whole time. He caught me up on his adventures since I last saw him. Apparently, he met some people in a small group that were living in some shipping container bunker. They had been there since the beginning and were doing okay. They hadn't gone without losses, like the rest of us, but all things considered, they managed better than most.

"Why didn't you just stay with them?"