End of the Line (3 page)

             
She got it.

             
For a while we didn’t ask anyone, still weary from the attack. However Robert saw Simon hovering around the repair shop an
d convinced Abe to let him in.

             
After that we got Eli, Harlan, Rosa, Aisha, Jake and Maddie.

             
On Christmas Day, we had a roaring celebration to boast morale which was low, the holidays hit us the hardest, even me and I’m Jewish. For many of us it was the realization that not only were we not going to have our family members back, but the wo
rld would never be what it was.

             
At 12:01, a minute after Christmas was over, Abe excused himself. He went to the roof and jumped off. Jumping off the roof was not the best way to go as it isn’t that high up but he didn’t survive the fall. Princess without emotion said he dove head first like he was going into a swimming pool. He had been laughing and joking even as he left for the roof. N
o one knew he planned to do it.

             
Jonathan froze to death soon after. I wonder if he offed himself as well. Abe set up leadership: he was in charge of a four member council that included Jim, Eli, Ashley and me. After Abe’s death, all three voted for me to become leader. I voted for Jim.

             
We didn’t add anyone to the council; they gave me two votes instead. Today was the day we would find out if that worked.

             
The walk to the pharmacy seemed to take forever. I had shopped in this store before and I didn’t remember it being this big. Ashley stood near the entrance with Jim. She was a petite woman in her late fifties with grey hair with dark ends from her grow
n out dye job. Eli joined her.
             
Abe put Ashley on the council so she would feel useful. She was an unskilled laborer, high school diploma and working dead end jobs to both live on and give some cash to a former drug addict daughter going through college. She didn’t have anything to offer except be working at CostK
ing already when Abe came in. 
             

             
She enjoyed her leadership role. It made her not think if her adult kids, a girl and a boy, and two grandchildren were alive or not. Because of her age, she knew we wouldn’t go to heroic methods to save her. Jim and I gave her a sheet of codeine which was against the rules. Except for Princess and Ernie, painkillers must
be preserved for emergencies.

             
Princess got two Vicodin for when she had to do something outside her normal duty. I didn’t know if she was using it or making sure she had them. We have an ample supply of Vicodin and when we fini
shed, we would give her Xanax.
             

             
The pharmacy was locked and only Jim and I had keys because only two keys could be found. In it we kept most of the painkillers including the over the counter ones.  Although everyone was given two big bottles of whatever OTC they wanted. I chose generic Tylenol. We also kept the antibiotics whi
ch we’ve only had to use once.

             
“Hey doctor,” Ashley said. 

             
“Good morning, Ashley.”

             
“Heard we got some goo
d candidates,” she said. 

             
“Any have medical training?”

“Pharmacist, that’s all and a massage therapist.”

I laughed and Ashley looked at me oddly. I guess Princess might get her masseuse after all. “Let me go check on Annemarie, and I’ll be with you shortly.”

We kept the infirmary next to the pharmacy, among the vitamin, beauty and drug aisles and tented it off with blankets with a single space heater inside to keep it warm and a floodlight for night. I pulled a blanket aside and found Annemarie and Mindy chatting. Mindy wore a mask to not catch Annemarie’s cold. Despite that Jake often slept with Mindy, she and Annemarie were best friends.

“Hey doctor,” Mindy said. Mindy was a divorced woman in her late 20’s whose husband left her with a high school education and debt while he got his MBA. She ended up becoming a home health aide to make ends meet and had planned to go nursing school. She was my honorary nurse.

Mindy had the triple whammy of dealing with the flu, fleeing from zombies and dealing with the dregs of society. Tom had knocked her out and dragged her to loading dock where he had his way with her for two hours. It was only by luck that Abe found them. Abe shot both of Tom’s knees with his own gun, and gave him to the zombies. I don’t know if I wouldn’t have been so cruel.

Mindy coped as best she could. She knew enough to take HIV meds and the morning after pill. So far she seemed to be clean. 

“Hey Annemarie, how are you doing?” I should wear a mask but didn’t. Instead I kept a few feet distant, even though I rarely got colds

Annemarie’s response was a sneeze. Around her were vitamin C, D, zinc cold remedies and some decongestives.

“Thanks for the time off.” Her voice sounded nasal. Annemarie was a plump woman with pretty red hair in her early twenties, who had been studying communications at Hofstra, when the flu started. She had been gathering supplies at CostKing when a riot broke out near her school. She didn’t try to go back.

A communications major really doesn’t do much but Annemarie was a quick study. Her job became being an assistant to anyone who needed it, usually Jim, and act as our third rooftop shooter. She was the worst of all three. She usually got day duty because it was easier to see the zombies.

“We definitely don’t want you to get sicker.”

She nodded, blew her nose. Colds and respiratory illnesses spooked me. A chilly reminder of the flu epidemic that changed the world. This was an ordinary cold, probably passed on from someone in the repair shop, as Annemarie was social. The flu would incapacitate you.

“We don’t want to spread it. I’m going to have to ask you to stay in here at least until tomorrow.”

             
“Come on, I can be sick in my own aisle. I won’t leave it.”

             
“We have a decent selection of movies and books. Jim can bring you some later. It’s warmer here than your aisle.”

             
“How about Shaun of the Dead?” she said and laughed.

             
One night she ransacked the DVD and book section destroying anything about zombies; Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Zombieland, World War Z all turned into pieces.

             
I don’t blame her. It doesn’t seem funny when you were in it.

             
“What you should do is drink lots of water and rest. I’ll ask Maddie to make you hot tea. Do you want a sleeping pill? I have to go get Princess hers.”

             
Annemarie rolled her eyes at the mention of Princess. In a popularity poll, Princess would rate at the bottom and Jim at the top. “Sure, I’ll take one.”

             
I made my way to the pharmacy, unlocking the door and letting it close behind me

             
With the door locked, no one could see me. I started crying, softly, I did this once a day, part of my routine. I had to do it to keep the memories from
flooding in and impairing me.
             

             
I contained myself in five minutes, knew I had to keep it together for the others. I wiped my eyes with a tissue box that Jim probably left. He probably knew I came in here to cry. He knew everything. I grabbed two bottles from the shelf. Two pain pills for Princess and one sleeping pill for Annemarie. I could take a bunch of these pills. Then it would be over and I would be with my family. Jim would find me. Would he try to revive me or accept my choice? Was it right for me to do this
after what happened with Abe?

             
I didn’t want to be leader, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to survive.  Even if the humans did win, what kind of life was left for us?

             
“Annemarie,” I said, handing her the pill. “I expect you to use this. You should sleep as much as possible.”

             
“I might be about to go tonight for a couple of
hours,” she said then coughed.

             
“In the freezing cold? I don’t think so. Harlan will do some extra hours, I’ll have Ashley, Jim, or Dave on sentry duty.”

             
“I feel useless.”

             
“I’ll have Harlan give you some rifle magazines to load.”

             
CostKing didn’t sell guns; there was a burnt out Smile-Mart in the same shopping center, where we got rifle rounds, but we only had three rifles, two shotguns and a handgun that only had 20 bullets, and we had eight boxes of shotgun shells. That gun and one shotgun were locked in the pharmacy. Princess brought two of the rifles and two suitcases filled with rifle ammo that we were about a third of the way through. She kept one of those rifles with her at all time. Her favorite. I think she slept with it. We only let the sharpshooters have the rifles. The rest of us use weapons of choice, baseball bats, tire irons, crowbars and golf clubs. We even sharpened the edges of broom handles as long reach weapons. A few people had their own guns and kept them. I know Mindy had her own handgun with only a four rounds in it. It had been Tom’s gun originally. He gave it to Mindy as some kind of morose present.

             
Annemarie didn’t look satisfied but seemed too sick to complain.

             
“Doc,” said Jim’s voice from outside the curtain. “We’re ready.”

             
“Take care,” I told Annemarie, then left the infirmary. I would check up on her and the others later.