Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (6 page)

     "Isn't the CDC in Atlanta?" Shari asked.  "Maybe there's something there."

     Maria's eyes widened, and she shook her head.  "Mm-mmm, you don't wanna go there.  The place is a death trap.  A guy came through here last week from Georgia, and he made it clear that there's nothing but trouble at the CDC.  A lot of people thought that if they made it there, they could save their loved ones.  And the result was a huge zombie infestation.  Plus, the day this thing broke out, the CDC swore up and down that they had no idea what was going on, and that they had no advice to offer.  As far as we know, the survivor camps are all that's left of the old world...the only place left where we can raise our family."

     Cesar scoffed.  "If there's anyone left alive in them," he muttered as he bit into a piece of fish.

     Maria sighed.  "Are we really going to get into this right now?"

     Cesar shrugged.  "You know how me and the others feel about the subject, and still you insist on making the decision for all of us.  That survivor camp might be just as much a death trap as the CDC, or anywhere else, for that matter.  It seems we're doing just fine on our own, so I don't see why we should put ourselves at risk again to travel to a magical fortress that might not even exist."

     Shari swallowed the last of her fish and cleared her throat uncomfortably.  "He's right to worry...all it takes is one person dying within the walls of that fortress, and it could wipe out the whole place.  On the other hand, if there is some kind of stable population there, then it makes sense to check it out."

     Daphne spoke up from the bench, where she sat sharpening sticks with her knife.  "I think what Shari is saying is that there's danger if you go, and danger if you stay.  It's just the world we live in."

     Cesar chuckled.  "Damned if we do, and damned if we don't.  For sure."

     Shari stood, motioning to Daphne.  "Well, thanks for lunch, but Daphne and I should probably get back on the road."

     "Where are you headed?" Maria asked.

     "To my parents' house near Carbondale, then north from there, toward Wisconsin.  We figure the undead should be almost a non-issue once they're frozen, and the winters start earlier up there."

     "And then they'll thaw into puddles in the spring!" Maria said, her eyes lighting up.  "That's a good idea.  I never thought of it that way.  It makes sense, though.  It doesn't seem like the zombies have normal blood flow like we do.  God, let them all freeze into ice cubes!"  She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands together as if praying.  "Come on, winter!"

     "Are you sure you don't want to take a nap while you're here?" Cesar asked.  "Take advantage of the extra safety of having more people around?"

     Shari shook her head.  "Nah, thanks.  We'd probably take you up on it, but we need to take advantage of the daylight."

     Cesar nodded.  "Yeah, you don't want to travel at night, I understand."  He extended his hand to Shari, then Daphne.  "We can't thank you enough for what you've done."

     "We were glad to do it," Shari said.

     "You two be careful," Maria said, hugging each of them.  "You'll be in our prayers."

     "If you ever come across a ham radio, or a walkie-talkie," Shari said, "get in the habit of using it.  Maybe we'll be in touch again someday, and if nothing else, it's a good way to connect with other survivors.  Warn them of trouble in the area, or listen to warnings transmitted by others.  Maybe you can even find out something about that survivor camp without having to get too close to it."

     Cesar nodded.  "That's a good idea.  I'll look around for walkie-talkies the next time I'm in town."  He smirked.  "I mean, it's not like I'll know how to use the thing, but we've got time to sit around and figure it out."

     Juanita threw her arms around Shari and Daphne. 

      "I'll never forget you," she told them.  "Be safe, okay?"  Shari and Daphne nodded, both of them wiping tears from the corners of their eyes.

     "You too, kiddo," Daphne said, bending to give Juanita one final squeeze before she mounted her ATV.  "I think you learned from your ordeal, huh?"

     Juanita nodded.  "I'm not chasing any more cats any time soon, I know that!" she said emphatically, turning and taking her mother's hand to see the two women off. 

     "You guys take care, alright?" Shari said as she mounted Eva.  "Stay safe."  She looked back as they waved goodbye, then smiled, nodded, and followed Daphne along the creek, heading back toward the park.

      Shari finished checking over the last room of the four-room cabin, then walked back into the front living area.  She flopped down onto the couch.

     "It's okay, you can let your guard down," she told Daphne, who closed and locked the front door, where she had kept watch while Shari checked over the rooms.  "No monsters in here, I even checked the closet."

     It was past eight o'clock, and the last remnants of daylight were fading from the sky.  The cabin sat on a stretch of 51 about thirty miles north of the Ohio River, in Illinois. 

     Shari lit up a joint, inhaling deeply and holding it in her lungs as she spoke.  "If we leave at sunrise, then we should be there before midday," she said, "barring some sort of major incident."  She exhaled a large, dense cloud toward the wooden ceiling beams.  She sat in silence for a moment, then sighed as she continued.  "I don't really expect to find them alive.  I mean, it's entirely possible, and I'm hoping for it, but if they're not, then we can be back on the road.  I don't want to hang out there for too long if...." 

     "If what?" Kandi prodded.  "If the place reeks to high heaven of your rotting mum and daddy?" 

    
Eat shit, you evil cunt,
Shari thought.  "If there's no good news to be found there," she concluded.

     Shari had a quick meal of canned minestrone, then looked around the cabin for any useful items.  She gathered a few canned and dry goods from the kitchen, along with the matches and lighters.  She went back to the front room to load the food into her backpack, then searched the desk near the front door.  In the top drawer, she found a small, spiral-bound notebook.  She opened it, and quickly realized it had been somebody's journal.  She read the entry on the first page.

    
I don't know if there's any purpose in writing this,
the entry began,
or if anybody's ever going to read it or even care, but I feel better getting it out, either way, just in case I don't make it for some reason.  I was using my tablet, but then something happened to the generator and we didn't have power anymore, so now I'm forced to do it the old-fashioned way, with a pencil and paper.  Well, to summarize what I wrote on the tablet,  the shit hit the fan, mom's dead, and now I'm stuck with dad, who's as angry and abusive as ever.  And to make matters worse, I think he was bit.  He's been wearing a long-sleezed shirt since yesterday morning, even though it's been past ninety-five degrees every day for the past week.  He's acting even crazier than usual lately, and he's been looking through my stuff, acting all suspicious or something.  I even saw him looking at my journal when he thought I was asleep.  Ha, good thing he can't read.
  Shari skimmed about a half-dozen more pages, then flipped to the last page.

     Fuck it, I'm done.  Dad always tells me to be a man, so it's time for me to man up and do what I have to do.  That crazy old burnout's definitely been bit, and now he's just a ticking time bomb.  I haven't slept in four days, because I don't know which one of his breaths will be his last, and I don't want to wake up to my zombie dad eating my face off.  I'm leaving, and if he tries to stop me, I'll kill him.  He's done for, anyway.  He's gonna be one of them, it's only a matter of time.  I don't know where I'll go from here...maybe Sikeston, I heard there's a survivor camp there.  But I have to go somewhere.  I don't want to live my life here, alone with the ghost of a dad I hate.
 

     Shari closed the journal, then picked it up to return it to the drawer.  As she lifted it, a photo slid out from between the pages, fluttering down to the desk.  She picked up the photo, bringing it closer to her face to examine it more closely.  It showed a handsome, dark-haired teenage boy with ear plugs and a pierced eyebrow, his arms thrown around the shoulders of a middle-aged woman whom, Shari was guessing, must have been his  mother.  His chin rested lovingly on the woman's shoulder, and they both grinned at the camera.  Shari tucked the picture back into the journal, then placed it back in the drawer where she had found it.  She laid down on the couch to go to sleep for the night, wondering about the young man.  Had he made it to Sikeston, or anywhere else?  Had his zombie dad eaten him?  She hoped he was still alive and well, but she knew that the fact that his journal was left in the desk didn't bode too well for his odds.  She struggled to settle into sleep, then experienced nightmares throughout the night that woke her only to disappear from her conscious mind back into obscurity before she fell asleep to begin the process over again.  One of the nightmares woke her up around 5:30, and she sighed, resigning to give up her attempt to rest.

     "Pointless," she hissed to herself as she swung her legs down from the couch to the floor.  She picked up her jeans from the floor, wiggling into them and sliding her feet into her boots.  She lit up a smoke, settling into an armchair near the bedroom, where Daphne lay sprawled across the bed.  Shari had about half an hour to kill before it was time to wake Daphne, so she used the time to clean her assault rifles by the flickering candlelight.  She had finished her regular AK and was working on her sniper rifle when the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon, slowly filling the small cabin with daylight.  Daphne awoke, stretched briefly, and trudged through the living room and into the small bathroom. 

     "Sorry to hold us up," she mumbled.

     "Neh," Shari said.  "Sun's just now coming up."  She finished piecing her rifle back together, then held it up into the stream of light coming in through the window.  "Besides, it gave me time to clean my irons."  She stood and crossed the room, gathering the various items she had unpacked.  By the time she had finished packing, Daphne was finished in the bathroom.  Shari used the toilet, washed up, and went back into the living room to join Daphne for a quick breakfast.  It was a few minutes past six when they left the cabin, stepping outside into the brightening day.  Shari was pleased to find Eva sleeping where she had left her the previous evening.  She had hitched the horse closely to a post, then dumped several large garbage bags full of aluminum cans she had found in a shed in a perimeter around the post.  She had hoped that if any undead approached with the intention of making a meal of the horse, the jingling of the cans would give them away.  It appeared, though, that each can was where she had left it. 

     She stepped inside the ring of cans and mounted Eva.  "Must not be any zombies in the area," she said.

     "Appears to be the case," Daphne agreed as she turned the key in the ignition of her ATV.  She started down the quarter mile-long dirt driveway back toward the highway, Shari and Eva behind her.

     Shari's eyes flitted over the landscape as she rode, taking in the sights and sounds of the late summer morning.  The various scavenging birds had ruled the skies ever since the outbreak began back in April.  The ever-present sound of hawks and vultures calling to one another became just part of the background, although Shari was trying to get into the habit of using the birds' presence as a clue to let her know where dead bodies, or undead themselves, might be. 

     They were about halfway down the driveway when Shari saw the quick glimmer of a metal object catching the sun's rays to her right, in a thin copse of elm and birch trees.  She turned in the direction of the glimmer, but didn't see any sign of it.  She slowed Eva and narrowed her eyes, peering intently into the narrow wooded area.  After a moment, she saw what she believed she was looking for, about twenty feet behind her and ten feet inside the treeline.

     "Hey Daphne," she called, cupping her hands around her mouth, "wait up."  She dismounted and approached the treeline, her bow drawn.  A corpse lay on the ground, its upper body sprawled over a hollow log.  Her heart sank when she saw the short, dark hair.  She saw the large earplugs, which had caused the decomposing earlobes to droop excessively.  She saw the eyebrow ring, which was, she supposed, what had reflected the sunlight and caught her attention.

     "I don't know your name," she mumbled.

     "Who is it?" Daphne asked from behind her.

     "Jesus," Shari said breathlessly.  "You scared the crap out of me.  Good thing you weren't a zombie, I guess, because I wouldn't have heard 'em coming."

     "No," Daphne said, "but I bet you'd have smelled 'em, for damn sure."

     Shari nodded toward the corpse.  "It's someone who was staying in that cabin," Shari said.  "I found his journal, and a picture of him.  He had written something about trying to make it to Sikeston, said he thought his abusive dad was bitten and getting ready to turn.  I guess he never made it."     

     Daphne stepped around to the other side of the body, crouching down.  "He won't be getting up," she said, pointing to the man's left temple.  Shari stepped around to see what she was pointing at.  She leaned down and saw a small piece of metal about half the thickness of a pencil protruding from the skull.

     "I wonder what happened," Shari breathed, standing to have a better look at the entire corpse.

     Kandi appeared beside her, pointing to the man's dark green T-shirt.  "Well, princess, there appears to be a lot of blood on the back of that shirt...all that blood couldn't have come from that tiny hole in his skull, now could it?"

    
No,
Shari thought,
and besides, there's none on the shoulder of the shirt, just on the back, and on the bottom.
  She lifted the shirt gingerly away from the lower back, revealing a large, ragged bite wound.  The flesh and muscle hung in loose, stringy flaps, partially severed from the back ribs.  "He was bitten," she whispered, her chest heaving as she sighed.  "He didn't want to turn."

     "Can't say I blame him," Daphne said.  "I wonder if it was his dad."

     Shari sneered.  "Most likely."  She felt a seething hatred for the young man's father, though she had never met him. 
I wish he got to make it to Sikeston.

     "Well, princess," Kandi said, "you can wish in one hand and shit in the other, but if you do, it'll only serve to highlight the fact that you've got no hands left to fight the undead with."

     Shari rolled her eyes, starting back toward the driveway.  "I wish we had a shovel to bury him," she called over her shoulder to Daphne, who strode faster to catch up.

     "Yeah," she said, abreast with Shari.  "But I didn't see one in the shed, or around the house when we first looked around yesterday."
     Shari gazed into the distance, her eyes stinging with tears.  "I don't know why I feel so personally affected by it," she said as she mounted Eva.  "I mean, I didn't know him.  But just the words he wrote...he seemed like a smart kid.  I know he's just one of millions...
billions
, probably...but if we can no longer see the value in one single human life, then...."

     "Then what's the point of any of this?" Daphne concluded, waving her hand in a broad arc.  "Survival, what's the point if we don't care anymore?"

     "That's the thing of it," Shari concurred.  "No matter how many we lose, each one is still important.  Each one still matters.  Remembering that helps keep me crazy and holds me together at the same time."

     Daphne nodded.  "I think I can get that," she said, starting her ATV and beginning down the driveway.

     Shari looked back toward the young man as she rode away. 
I hope you're with your mother somewhere,
she thought. 
And thank you for having the foresight to be sure that you wouldn't walk again to do to somebody else what your dad did to you.