Chloe Zombie Apocalypse series (Book 1): Chloe (2 page)

C
hloë waited
until the monsters disappeared before stepping inside the camp.

It was mid-afternoon. She knew that because the sun wasn’t right in the middle of the sky; it was leaning towards the west. She’d learned that in school back in the days when she’d needed school. Sun rises in the east, sets in the west. She never thought she’d need to use that information back then. Always thought it’d be just easier to use a watch or a phone.

But now she was alone, now she was in the world of the monsters, her knowledge came in handy.

She walked across the cool grass. Felt it work between her toes. She’d started walking barefoot a few months ago. Hurt her feet at first, but it meant she could move around much quieter. Which was what she needed when she was surviving. Silence. Just like animals.

She needed to be quieter than the monsters.

That’s what kept her alive.

She felt the cool breeze brush against her skin. Mid-afternoon was her favourite time of day. It was hard later in the day. Always seemed so warm nowadays. But now, it was perfect. Her favourite weather.

Just a pity about the things she had to do in this weather.

Just a pity she couldn’t enjoy it.

She unzipped her black cloak and let some of the wind cool her down. Carrying a backpack everywhere wasn’t easy, but she had to do it. She looked at the dead bodies lying across the grass. The man. The woman. The other man. It was a shame she’d had to lead the monsters here. They seemed okay people. Not brilliant people—they did nasty things to others when it meant them surviving. But they were okay. Not as bad as some people Chloë had encountered since the world collapsed nine months ago.

Not as bad as some of the people who’d turned her world upside down time and time again.

She reached down to the man with curly blond hair. His guts dangled out of his chest. She knew she didn’t have long. Soon, he’d turn into one of the monsters. She was surprised he hadn’t turned already. Sometimes, the dead turned right away.

But sometimes, she found herself with a bit of luck.

Luck was exactly what she needed.

She checked his pockets. Found a few mouldy biscuits. They’d do. She knew he’d had them in there. She’d watched this group for ages. Seen this man called Elliot stealing food for himself. Even when the other man, Patrick, was feeling so hungry he was ill.

It made sense. Everyone had to do bad things to keep themselves alive.

Chloë had learned that lesson time and time again.

She resisted the urge to eat some of the blue biscuits and stood back up. She hadn’t eaten in … well, there’d been a few sunsets since she’d last eaten. She’d had some water yesterday, but that tasted a bit sour and gave her a bad stomach. She knew these people were low on food. But they didn’t realise that “low on food” was a luxury.

Low on food was the difference between life and death.

She walked past the first two bodies. Walked over to the man. The fat man who she’d led out into the woods. She looked down at him. Looked at the gun in his right hand, the knife in his left.

It was a shame what Chloë had done to his girlfriend. She felt bad about that. Because of all the people in this camp, his girlfriend seemed like the most decent one of all.

But she’d had to do it. Because doing it led the man back to the camp.

Doing it led him right into her trap.

Doing it kept Chloë alive.

She crouched. Listened for a sound from the fallen body. Amazing that none of them had risen yet. Just typical if they did. She hadn’t properly looted their camp yet. She had to act fast. Had to hurry.

She picked the gun out of his right hand. Shoved it inside one of her cloak pockets.

She took the knife. Compared it with the long, sharp combat knife she’d taken from another group a few weeks ago.

It wasn’t great in comparison.

So she threw it back down to the forest floor.

Kicked some twigs and soil over it. Didn’t want to risk anyone else finding it.

She stepped away from the man. Walked over to the tent. She pulled the opening aside. Looked over her shoulder to check that the bitten victims hadn’t yet risen. She didn’t want to get stuck in a tent while they were around. Couldn’t gamble getting cornered.

All this just came natural to her now.

All these thoughts were just automatic.

She looked inside. Saw a few half-empty bottles of murky water. Chloë walked over to them. Picked up a few of them. Stuffed them inside the pockets of the cloak. She found a few scraps of cooked animal. Rabbit, or something.

She took that too. The flies hadn’t got to it yet so that meant it would be okay.

She grabbed a few other things. Things she needed. A few bullets. A carton of Sunny D—wow, it’d been a while since she’d had a Sunny D. Mum never used to let her or her sister have them. Told them the sugar was bad for their teeth. That it’d turn them orange.

But Mum wasn’t here anymore.

So she took the Sunny D and stuffed it in her overflowing pocket.

She turned. Started to head back out the tent. Figured she’d better get away fast. The dead would be walking again soon. Or some bandits would find this place. The woods were safe—safer than the roads—but there were still bandits everywhere. Nasty people. Of course, everyone was nasty. Everyone
had
to be nasty to survive.

But some people living in this world were especially nasty.

She’d learned that the hard way.

The scars on her face a constant reminder.

She cast aside the memory. Or the
memories
of the things that had happened to her. The things that had turned a girl who was barely in her teens into someone much more mature. Someone who’d been forced into growing up in order to survive.

She started to leave the tent.

Then she saw something.

A book. A hardcover book resting on the floor of the tent.

She leaned over to it. Squinted. Harry Potter.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
. She’d never read that one. She’d read the first one and loved it. Halfway through the second one when the world collapsed.

She knew this was the third one. But she could just pretend she’d finished the second one and start reading this one.

She reached down. Stuffed it inside her pocket, which was at bursting point.

Turned to the front of the tent.

She saw movement.

Saw a shadowy silhouette move outside the tent.

She stood still. Stood completely still. Her heart picked up. She took a few deep breaths of the air. Even though it smelled of rot, she was so used to it now that it didn’t bother her.

She kept completely still.

As long as the monster didn’t groan, she’d be okay.

Because groaning would alert the others.

Groaning was the way they spoke to each other.

She watched the monster stumble over towards the other fallen dead.

Saw their silhouettes as the opening to the tent fluttered in the breeze.

She watched them stand. Watched chunks of flesh fall from their bones. Watched them wander aimlessly like the flies buzzing around them. One of them—the woman—stumbled where the other monster had ripped a chunk out of her leg.

An image flashed into Chloë’s mind. An image of the death she’d watched. The struggling. The way the monsters had eaten these people alive.

A part of her felt bad. A part of her knew she could’ve helped. A part of her knew she hadn’t had to leave these people to die. To trap them.

But another part of her knew what happened when she trusted people.

Another part of her knew what happened whenever she allowed herself to get close to anyone.

Or let anyone close to her.

Bad things happened.

Bad things happened that she couldn’t let happen again.

Ever.

She turned around.

Walked to the back of the tent.

Lifted the knife and sliced the material open.

She crept out of the back of the tent. Scanned the floor for loose twigs, fallen leaves, anything that might make a sound.

Clutched her pockets so nothing inside them rattled.

Clutched her knife.

She looked back over her shoulder. Looked at the monsters. The chubby man who’d chased her. The glassy look in his eyes. The dead look.

And the other two. The blond man. The ginger woman. The ones she’d led the monsters right to. Now, shuffling around their tent, desperate to break free in their undead forms.

She looked at them. Felt pity for them. Wanted to put them out of their misery.

But she couldn’t risk it.

She couldn’t risk anything she didn’t need to. Not anymore.

She turned back around.

Swallowed a lump in her dry throat.

And she crept past the trees, away from the camp, away from the monsters, and into the vast expanse of the forest.

C
hloë pointed
the dimming torch at the Harry Potter book and tried to focus.

The darkness outside was thick and tangible. The weather was much cooler than it had been earlier that day. That was just the way it worked. Warm in the day, freezing at night. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do in winter. Last winter, she’d had somewhere to stay for the bulk of the time. People she’d travelled with. People she’d trusted.

She wasn’t sure she’d have that same luxury this year.

But she tried not to think about the cold. Just about the book. She was on Chapter Two. She’d just been getting into it. It seemed spookier than the first two books. But then she’d heard howling well into the distance, and when she’d looked out at the woods, she swore she saw movement.

She swore she saw movement every single night in this dark, vast woods.

But she just had to try to focus.

Just had to try to get through it.

She’d found a decent place to rest a few weeks back. The inside of a massive tree. She didn’t know the kind of tree—Dad used to be good at identifying trees, and he helped teach her the names of a few. But her dad wasn’t here anymore. Not dead. Well, at least she hoped he wasn’t dead. But he hadn’t been in Preston when the outbreak of the monsters had started. He hadn’t been with Chloë, her mum, her sister, when the undead started walking.

He’d been at the other side of the country. Lorry driving for Warburtons. The people who made bread and biscuits.

She hoped he hadn’t made the mouldy biscuits she’d been forced into eating earlier, because the sour taste of it clung to her lips.

She swallowed back a sickly taste. At least she’d eaten. At least she’d had something to drink. Sunny D. Sweet, thick, but it was something. And at least she was inside the bark of this tree. At least she was out of sight of the rest of the world.

At least she hoped she was.

Sitting here with her torchlight.

The only light in the forest that wasn’t the moonlight, which the clouds suffocated.

She hoped nobody else could see her.

She clenched her teeth together to stop them rattling. She was cold. So cold. Didn’t help that she felt sick. She tried sipping on a bit of water but she didn’t want to throw it up. She’d done that a while back. It’d been such a waste. She didn’t want to waste anything else.

Because wasting supplies meant needing more supplies.

And needing more supplies meant taking more supplies.

From other people.

She listened to the wind brush through the trees. Saw the dark fingers of the branches sway in the breeze like teasing claws. She thought back to earlier that day. To the people she’d trapped. Perhaps if she’d just asked them for help, things would’ve been different. Maybe they’d have let her into their camp. Given her some of their water. Shared food with her. Looked after her.

But she thought back to all her other experiences on the road.

Not a single one of them matched up with that.

She felt the memories of the recent past invade her consciousness. Felt her heartbeat pick up. No. She couldn’t allow herself to remember. Because remembering made her weak. Remembering made her a little girl again, and she couldn’t be a little girl if she wanted to live.

The rope.

The bikers.

Her mum.

No!

She looked back at
Harry Potter
. The book shook in her hand. She could barely focus on the words, but she just had to. Anything but remembering the past. Anything but remembering the things she’d seen.

The things she’d done.

She read another paragraph. But the howling distracted her once again. It seemed to be getting closer. Probably wolves. Or just dogs. Pet dogs that didn’t have anyone to look after them, not anymore. Pet dogs that went from being loving animals to wild creatures.

Creatures Chloë sometimes had to deal with.

To survive.

To keep herself alive.

She found herself drifting again. Thinking about her dad. He’d always told her and her sister, Elizabeth, that they could get a dog some day. Mum was never sure because she got allergies, but sometimes Mum said stuff just so the pair of them didn’t get their hopes up, then went and did the opposite for a surprise. That was one of the many things Chloë loved about her mum.

She reached into her pocket like she always did when she was afraid. Then she remembered her mum’s necklace wasn’t there. It hadn’t been for a long time.

It wasn’t the exact same locket her mum had worn when she’d died seven months ago anyway—the one Chloë had given to her for an early Christmas present. Stole it from a shop in the early days of the dead when it was just her and her mum and another group. It was one a man called Riley had given her. Riley was the leader of the last group she’d been with. He was a good man. He’d given it to Chloë to remember her mum by.

But Chloë knew the truth of the necklace.

She pulled her hand out of her pocket and cleared her throat. She tried not to remember the past. Tried not to remember what she’d done.

It was gone. There was nothing she could do to change history. Not anymore. Not ever.

She heard movement outside. Footsteps. Instinctively, she flicked the torchlight off. Huddled back as far as she could against the damp bark. Held her breath. Sat there in total darkness,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
still in hand.

A knife in her other hand.

She hadn’t meant to hurt her old group. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. And Riley had forgiven her for what she’d done. He’d forgiven her and they’d all moved on.

But more bad things had happened.

Bad things that led to the scars on Chloë’s face.

The pain between her legs.

The mark around her neck.

Bad things had happened. And they’d made her realise that she couldn’t be around people anymore. She couldn’t trust anyone because whenever she trusted someone, they went away.

Or whenever she trusted someone, they died.

Died, because Chloë was forced into doing something bad.

Died, because Chloë just wanted to live.

She listened to the footsteps pass by. Heard the howling of the wolves echo through the woods.

She held on to the hope that maybe, just maybe, her dad was still out there somewhere. Alive.

She held on to the hope that she’d be with him again some day. She’d see him again some day. Because he was the only person Chloë could ever trust. The only person who’d ever understand Chloë.

The only person she had left.

But she knew that he was gone.

She knew she’d never find him.

She wouldn’t even know where to start.

Light split the sky as the moon emerged from behind a thick grey cloud. The tips of the trees were illuminated by its light, bringing Chloë’s attention to all kinds of movement, all kinds of shuffling and shaking and twitching and turning.

She thought she wanted the moonlight. Thought she felt safer in it. Until it was actually here, and she felt exposed. Like she was standing on a stage in a spotlight.

She stared up at the moon. Listened to the howling. Listened to the footsteps.

Watched the clouds creep over the moon.

Cover the first quarter of it.

Then half.

Then three-quarters.

She waited for the darkness and she thought about her dad. Thought about her mum. Thought about her sister.

All the people she’d loved.

All the people she’d lost.

And then the cloud completely covered the moon and trapped Chloë in the pitch black again.

Alone with her thoughts.

Alone with her memories.

Alone.