“Megan…,” I start to speak, but she interrupts me.
“I know what you’re going to say, and yeah, it isn’t nice, but this is the world we live in now. Staying risks us getting infected, it delays us another day getting to the cabin, and we don’t even know this guy.”
We are all silent for a long time after she says that. Part of me knows she is right, but the part that is still me underneath all the horror and trauma of the last few days refuses to do something like that to another human being.
“We don’t know for sure he will turn. He might be fighting off an infection,” I disagree with her.
“I think we should stay,” Ryan agrees with me. “It’s the right thing to do, and we’ve already burned half a day’s travel anyway. We wouldn’t get too far before we’d have to stop for the night, at least we know this place is secure.”
Megan’s lip curls up at his words.
“Of course you’d side with her,” she snaps, making me angry.
“It’s how I feel Megan,” Ryan replies, far more calm than I would be if I were to open my mouth right now.
“I agree with Jane and Ryan, too,” Abby chimes in, breaking the tie.
“Fine!” Megan snaps, walking over to the boxes still stacked by the door. She grabs the box of garbage bags that need to go back over the windows.
We watch her storm off, all of us feeling a little uneasy with our decision.
I bring Kyle a glass of water, and I’m surprised to see he’s stopped shaking.
“Are you feeling better?” I ask, and Kyle nods.
“I think so…,” is all he gets out before he starts to vomit. I jump back just in time. I’m horrified to see that what he’s throwing up isn’t last night’s dinner, its blood, and lots of it.
Abby is on the ball and shoves a bucket under his head. The three of us stand back and watch it fill with blood.
“I think he’s infected,” Ryan murmurs quietly under his breath, though there is no way Kyle could have heard him over all of the coughing and spewing.
We look at each other helplessly. Ryan motions for us to follow him to the corner of the room.
“I’ve seen a few people turn and this is pretty advanced. He will vomit until he dies, and then he will come back as a zed.”
I stare wide-eyed at Kyle, and a tear leaks down my face. I’ve only just met him, but seeing another human being like this is horrible.
Kyle spits one last time and lays back on the bed, shaking and weak. I force myself to go over to him and hold a glass of water to his trembling lips. He takes a sip and coughs, and red splatter covers my knuckles.
“Get away from him!” Ryan snaps.
I give Kyle a look that I hope conveys how sorry I am before I retreat to the half-bathroom to scrub my hands. When I get back, Abby is ready and gives me at least ten squirts of the sanitizer.
“I hate seeing him like this,” Abby says, turning away from the scene before her.
Kyle must have started to vomit again while I was in the bathroom, and this time he is too weak to even sit up or hit the bucket. I start towards him when he begins to make a choking, gurgling sound, but Ryan grabs me around the waist and holds me back.
“Let me go!” I yell at him, struggling to get loose so I can roll Kyle on to his side so he isn’t choking on his own bloody puke.
“It’s better this way,” Ryan says grimly as he holds me even tighter. “This is going to save him at least another hour of torture.”
Tears are falling freely down my cheeks now. I stop fighting Ryan and turn into him instead, burying my face in his collarbone. Beside us, Abby starts to cry too. Ryan reaches out and pulls her into our hug. I wrap one arm around my best friend and let loose all the emotions I have been feeling. I feel more than a little guilty that all of my tears aren’t for Kyle, but I can’t stop. Thankfully, the gurgling and spluttering only last a couple of minutes. Then, there is only silence, and the sounds of Abby and I sniffling.
Without warning, Ryan pushes us brusquely away and pulls his knife from the leather on his belt. I hear the awful moan of the dead and then the wet, slurping sound of Ryan’s knife imbedding in Kyle’s head. I cringe when I hear the bone crunch, but, selfishly, I don’t turn around to see and neither does Abby. I feel bad leaving the burden for Ryan.
I hear Ryan go into the bathroom to rinse off his knife, and then I feel the warm press of his hand on my back.
“It’s over now,” he tells us, and his voice sounds like it’s on the edge of cracking. I throw my arms around him, and he shudders for a minute before gently pushing me away. I think if he let me hold him right now, he would probably break down.
In the morning, we move Kyle and his parents’ bodies outside and leave them peacefully underneath a shady old tree in the center of the field. We would have liked to bury them, but we don’t have the time, energy, or resources. I console myself with the fact that they are all together, which is a lot more than a lot of people can say in this apocalypse.
Megan disappears while we are lugging the bodies, and we don’t see her again until we’ve cleaned up and have the suburban packed. I would have been worried, but she is pretty bad ass and there hasn’t been a lot of activity around here the last two days.
We see her just as we’re ready to leave, lugging a box across the yard. Ryan runs over to help her out. His face is comical when we hear the scrabbling of little toes and the unmistakable clucking of chickens.
“What are you doing with those?” Abby asks, wrinkling her nose when Megan opens up the back of the Suburban. I walk over to inspect the cardboard box with few crude holes punched in the top for air.
“Think about it, we can’t just go to the supermarket when we want something.” Megan says, and I have to admit that it’s a great idea.
“There’s a bunch of grain for them in the barn, you should pull around,” Megan tells us as she rams the box of chickens into the already-packed cargo hold. I look over at Abby who’s wrinkling her nose up at the sound of the chickens scrabbling on the cardboard.
“You’ll be thanking me when you’re eating omelettes,” Megan puffs as she pulls herself into the SUV and points over towards the barn.
Ryan shakes his head, hiding the first smile I’ve seen on his face since Kyle. “Let’s pick this stuff up and get on the road,” he agrees, putting the car into drive.
The clucking about drives us crazy for the first fifty miles or so. After that, I’m not sure if we are growing used to them, or if the chickens are getting used to riding in the car. We are making good time, keeping to the side roads to avoid the major roadways that are probably clogged with zombies and abandoned cars. We see plenty of the dead, wandering around in legions, but they are fairly easy to avoid in the car. Around noon we see a huge group up ahead, shuffling around across the road and even filling the ditches; we have to turn off to avoid them.
“Are they travelling in packs?” Abby asks, leaning forward to observe them.
None of us know the answer. It certainly looks like they are grouping together. I begin to wonder how such a large group of them are randomly congregating in the middle of nowhere. Once we put a bit of distance between us and them, I am able to look back and see the large pileup of vehicles on the highway.
It definitely makes me more leery about being in the vehicle—those people had probably thought they were safe in their cars too.
I look down at the phone clutched in my hand. It’s been dead since yesterday. I’m sure there isn’t any cell service anyway, but it’s hard to give it up. Even if I can’t use it to call out, it still holds so much of my old life. It’s kind of like a memory box. Thankfully, phone chargers are pretty common and there is one in the suburban. Abby used to have the same phone too, but I don’t think she brought it with her. I probably shouldn’t have brought mine, it would have given me a clean, clear break without it. I plug it into the car charger, ignoring the looks from everybody, and watch as the battery slowly climbs. When it’s full, I leave it plugged in and open up my camera roll, flipping through them from start to finish. This time there is no emotional crying. I just look at our smiling faces and remember a happier time.
Ryan doesn’t want to stop anymore unless it’s absolutely necessary. We lost an entire day at the farm house, and every day we wait, travel gets more dangerous as more and more of humanity is turned into flesh eating monsters.
We stop for fuel at a gas station on the outskirts of a small town. I don’t even bother to learn its name, and this time we stay together and alert. It goes surprisingly smooth, with only the gas attendant roaming the parking lot with his vacant, black eyes, and rotting skin. Ryan puts him down quickly and gets to work prying the lid off the underground tank. Abby gets him the hose and hand pump from the back while Megan and I keep close to the other two, staying alert for any signs of danger. Nothing happens. Ryan fills the tank, replaces the cover, and puts the hose away.
I want to say that I can’t believe how easy this has been, but I don’t as it’s the surest way to jinx us. I keep my mouth shut until we are back in the suburban.
“I can’t believe how easy that was,” Abby says as soon as the door shuts, and I groan.
Ryan gives me a funny look in the rear view mirror and peels out of the parking lot as though the dead are nipping at our heels because, let’s face it, Abby just jinxed us.
We drive for another hour without saying much, and I begin to relax a bit after Abby’s blatant jinx, which should have been my first clue that something terrible might happen.
“What is that black thing up ahead?” Megan leans forward in her seat and points at something in the not too distant horizon that looks odd against the grassy landscape. The sun is shining in our eyes from that direction, so it isn’t obvious at first.
“It can’t be…” Abby squints a bit, and I have a sinking feeling.
Ryan pulls over, gets out of the car, and goes toward to the back. He opens it up, causing the chickens to raise an immediate fuss before returning with a pair of binoculars in his hand. He stands by the driver’s side mirror and takes a long look. When the binoculars drop from his lifeless fingers, I know it can’t be anything good.
“Zombies,” Ryan confirms.
My heart starts pounding double time. It’s not that we really needed the binoculars, but I guess we were all hoping that our eyes were deceiving us.
“Looks like a shitload of them,” Megan says baldly, and Ryan nods.
“At least two hundred, if I had to guess.” He gets back in the SUV and puts it in reverse, backing into the ditch a little so he can turn around. “We need to back track to that last road we saw and go around them.”
It’s a plan that I totally agree with.
Ryan gets back on the road and pins it. The Suburban takes off like a shot, and I feel my heart soar—the more distance we put between us and them, the better. My euphoria is short lived as, almost instantly, the car shudders and begins to feel funny. A sensor on the dashboard beeps and I look over Ryan’s shoulder to see the tire pressure gauge lighting up like a Christmas tree.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Ryan yells, slapping the wheel as he jams it in park and jumps out of the car.
I throw open the door and follow him, nearly running into his back when he stops abruptly.
“What’s going on?” I ask, trying to fight down the panic.
“Flat tire,” he points to the driver’s side front tire, which is now completely flat. Ryan bends down and wrestles a fair-sized chunk of metal out of the rubber and holds it up to show us.
“Are we gonna have time to change it?” Abby asks with a whine, making it clear that I’m not the only one in full blown panic mode. The horde isn’t very far away, and now we have a flat tire.
“We have to try,” Ryan says grimly, turning to Abby. “Do you have a jack and a spare tire?”
Abby just shakes her head helplessly, so Megan starts digging around looking for it.
Ryan pops his head underneath the car and lets out a sigh of relief. “Found it,” he calls to Megan, who ducks down beneath with him. For a few minutes, all we can hear is the ratcheting of metal.
I stare out at the impending death pack and fight the urge to run away as fast as I can.
“Why can’t we just drive it flat until we find somewhere safe?” I ask when they finally emerge with a spare tire and some metal things in their hands.
“We would bend the rim, and then we’d really be screwed,” Megan answers.
I still look to Ryan for confirmation.
He nods, “We would risk losing the whole vehicle that way.”
The idea of losing the relative safety of four rolling wheels and metal walls does not appeal to me, but then neither does dying on the side of the road trying to hang on to it either.
“I think we can get this done quick. But, just in case, you girls start unpacking what we’ll need if we have to run for it. Keep it light.”
I look at Ryan, but he’s already jacking the car up. His muscles bulge, and a sheen of perspiration breaks out on his face. I can see him eying the zombies too, and I don’t miss the tremor of his fingers.
I run to the back of the car and start digging out our backpacks. I find Megan’s school bag and my own, just as Abby pulls out hers and Ryan’s.
I flip mine open and make sure there are a couple bottles of water and a few tins of food. I also make sure my fire poker is securely in my hand before turning back to Ryan. He’s loosening the lug nuts, so I turn back to my zombie vigil. They’ve spotted us now and a deafening chorus of excited moans tell me that we are definitely on their lunch menu.
“They’re getting closer,” I say as I watch them spilling across the nearby field like a plague of locusts.
“Not helping!” Ryan snaps at me as he strains against an especially tight bolt.
“We’re going to have to run!” Megan shouts, raising her gun. She aims at a couple zombies that have already reached the fence line. Her gun sounds like cracks of thunder as it recoils in her hands, and three zombies drop.
“Save your ammo!” Ryan yells at her, his face is a puddle of sweat.
“Should we bring the chickens?” Abby asks, panicked.
All three of us yell back at her in unison, “No!”
I don’t want to leave them to die, but I’m also not going to try and outrun a zombie horde with a box full of clucking chickens in my arms.
Abby looks sad for the chickens, but slams the door shut tight. Ryan finally gets the wheel off and starts to press the spare into place.
The zombies have reached the fence now. With the sheer number of them, it doesn’t slow them down very much. I wince when I hear the twang of snapping wire, and then they are spilling down into the ditch beside the road.
“Ryan!” I scream.
He looks up from the tire, dropping his tools, and springs to his feet. “Fuck!” he yells as he grabs his pack from me and throws it onto his back. “We have to run.”
I don’t need any urging; I was already half running before he said that.
We run along the gravel road at full speed, barely getting away from the car as the first wave of undead moan and groan and bump their slimy, oozy bodies along the Suburban. My heart sinks and races at the same time. I had really believed Ryan would get the tire changed in time and save the day.
“We should get off the road,” Megan pants as we run four-abreast along the gravel road. The zombies are not that far behind us, though we momentarily have the advantage of speed. They, however, have the advantage of never getting tired.
Ryan points to the opposite side of the road, and we race down the ditch. He holds the barbed wire apart with his foot and stretches the other one up with his arm. Megan dives underneath, followed by Abby, and then me. Megan holds the wire in turn, and I nearly scream when Ryan’s backpack gets caught on his way through. He tugs a little harder, and then it releases with a small rip of fabric before he tumbles across the grass. He gets to his feet really fast though, and I thank God for that.
Some of the zombies are almost to the fence already, and are leaning against it, moaning and gnashing their teeth with their arms upraised.
“We have to get moving!” Ryan yells to be heard over the noise, and we take off again.
I have no idea where we are going—we’re just running across a huge, grassy field that looks like it goes on forever. We run for a solid twenty minutes before my legs start to feel like jelly, and my lungs burn in agony. I’ve had a cramp in my side for the last ten minutes, but it’s crazy what you can ignore when you are being chased by something that wants to kill and maim you. We have outdistanced the zombies a bit, and I can’t go on. I slow to a walk and double over, clutching the stitch in my side.
“Jane,” Ryan grabs me by the arm and tries to propel me back into a run.
“I can’t,” I gasp in agony. I don’t want to die, but I can’t run another step without a rest either. Ryan looks behind us before slowing to a walk with a resigned huff.
“Thank God,” Abby moans, clutching her side. Even Megan has a red face and is puffing like she’s about to die.
“We can’t slow down for very long, or they will gain back the bit of ground we’ve put between us,” he warns.
Ryan doesn’t let go of my arm, and I force myself to walk through the agony—at least it’s not running, I tell myself. I focus on steadying my breathing while digging in my bag for a bottle of water. I take long, chugging swallows. Everyone else does the same.
“What are we going to do?” Abby whimpers, and I know how she feels.
“Run until we find somewhere safe.” Ryan says.
I am not a huge fan of that idea, but it’s not like we have a choice. We walk for another five minutes before Ryan says the words I’ve been dreading.
“Alright, breaks over.”
All three of us girls groan as we force our already stiffening muscles back into longer strides.
Sweat is pouring off every inch of my body, making me itch, but I force myself to ignore it and attempt to focus on the barely-there breeze that is somewhat fanning my forehead. We come to another section of fence and cross through it into another field of grass. This grass isn’t green and thick, it looks more like grazing land with yellowing grass that has been chewed down to a nub.
I force myself to keep going as I try to think of anything else to make me forget the pain in my body.
“There…has to be…a house….somewhere,” Megan pants.
I shake my head in dismay. We are in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of zombies on our tail.
“What’s that up ahead?” Ryan slows his gruelling pace back to a walk.
I try to blink the sweat out of my eyes enough to focus on the lone figure ahead of us.
“Do you think it’s someone who can help us?” I ask hopefully. My dreams are crushed when I run an arm across my eyes and see that the figure has the same staggering gait as the monsters that are chasing us. Ryan pulls out his huge hunting knife and approaches the creature. Moving so that fast he’s almost a blur, he spikes the zombie in the head before wiping the black goo off his blade with the things own shirt. He tucks it back into the sheath at his waist, and I wince at the goop.
“He had to have come from somewhere, hopefully there’s a farm around here.”
I try to feel motivated and relieved by his words, but I can’t help but wonder what will happen to us when we finally do bunk down and that horde behind us catches up. I hate this running across the countryside stuff, but I know I will hate being trapped inside four walls by two hundred monsters even more.