Shamblers: the zombie apocalypse (5 page)

Chapter Six

When my eyes opened, my first thought was: where the fuck am I? It took a minute
for me to remember the events of the night before. Thankfully, no zombies were anywhere to be seen. Neither was Becky. Or my hatchet, for that matter.

That fucking bitch,
I thought. She had used me for sex and disappeared. I felt very much violated all of a sudden.

I
climbed down from the Western Juniper and yawned loudly. In the daylight, I confirmed that the tree was indeed that species. I was rather surprised, although grateful, that I hadn’t fallen out of it in the night. I had been nestled against two sturdy boughs. My sleep had been fitful and only in short spurts. I yawned and rubbed my eyes. They burned from fatigue. 

I
was contemplating my next move when I saw a bush rustle nearby. I prepared for a zombie to burst out when Becky appeared a moment later with the hatchet in her hand. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she commented.

“I didn’t know wh
ere you went,” I replied coolly. I acted as if her disappearance hadn’t bothered me.

“A gal has to shit sometime,” she said.

“And you needed a hatchet to do so?” I asked with perplexity.

“
It’s a dangerous world,” she replied with a smile, “I don’t want to be caught with my pants down, so to speak.” She spun the hatchet around and offered me the handle. I took it. “What are we going to do now for food and water? I’m famished.”

“Good question.” I scratched my chin. I was starting to get a lot of stubble and it was itching. “
I’m famished myself. Man, we got lucky last night.”

“Yeah we did, huh stud?” Becky smiled
as she came over and kissed me on the cheek.

“No, I mean about no zombies or anything.”

“Oh, so I wasn’t any good?” she said quizzically as she raised an eyebrow.

I looked into her eyes. The dark circles around them revealed that she was just as tired as me.
“You were amazing.” I let her know: I had truly been legitimately impressed by her various talents and also her flexibility. “But we do really need to take more precautions now that we’re out here alone.”

She ran a hand down my arm and felt my muscles.
“Definitely,” she agreed, “and you need to be careful not to get me pregnant.”

Pregnancy was almost a death sentence nowadays. For reasons why, see Appendix A, which states: medicine had reverted to the stone-age.
Unless a pregnant woman stumbled upon a doctor or nurse with reasonable medical equipment, the odds of the mother surviving weren’t all too great.

“
We need water and food first,” I switched topics to the most important matter at hand. The thought of becoming a dad and raising a child in this world was about as scary as the zombies. “Maybe if we continue in the direction we were all running, we’ll run into other people from camp.”

We set off on an easterly course and kept our
tired eyes open for anything useful. We had survived the night through nothing short of a miracle. The zombies would be less active now that the sun was up.

We came across a stream less than an hour later and spent a few minutes washing ourselves off and drinking from it. I figured I’d likely be sick later, but when you’
ve gone almost a day without water and you don’t know where your next drink is coming from, you drink what you can and worry about the consequences later.

After freshening up a little, w
e walked for most of the morning and maintained some small talk. Mostly, we conversed about what the world used to be like. We took turns exchanging pandering tales of events from our childhood, some tragic, some funny, and others sentimental. We also talked about the rest of our group: Olivia, The Preacher, Marcus, and some others that Becky mentioned who I couldn’t put faces to. Each of us wondered if we’d ever see our old associates again or if they were even still alive.

At one point, I told Becky a
bout the collapse of the camp, and how Marcus had started brawling with the guy we’d been trying to exile. I reluctantly informed her that it had been his hot temper that had led to the zombies invading and overwhelming us. She was pissed, but I asked her not to hold it against him. After all, I told her, it had been an honest mistake.

Speaking of zombies, we noticed a few s
tragglers on occasion. We paused to let them by, snuck around them, or sometimes coordinated an attack to put them down. As we moved, we also gathered and snacked on blueberries. Fortunately, they could be found in abundance this time of year.

When we encountered a recently deceased corpse, we paused to investigate it.

“Think he’s one of ours?” I asked. I didn’t recognize the person. Then again, half his face was gone.

“Yeah, he is. I re
member that shirt from last night,” Becky confirmed. “I don’t remember his name, but he was definitely in our group as we went through the gate.”

I studied the corpse and remarked,
“at least he won’t come back as a zombie. You can see where they ate his brains clean out from the top of his head.”

“
That could have easily been us instead,” Becky reflected.

I nodded silent agreement. I don’t know if she felt guilty or just grateful, but I wasn’t about to feel any survivor guilt. I had long since gotten over that.

“If this dead guy is here,” Becky remarked a second later, “then it may mean that we’re on the right track. Maybe the rest of our group ran this way.”

The girl had good wits about her. I certainly had to credit her with that.
We searched the fellow’s pockets and yielded a lighter (which was a huge score), three cigarettes (though one was broken), and a comb.

With his valuables confiscated
, I looked at Becky and pointed further in the direction we were heading. “You ready?” I asked.

“Yep.”

We continued on our path and climbed a pretty large, steep hill until well after lunch. It was more like a miniature mountain, in truth. As we stopped at the crest, I reached into my pocket and took out a handful of blueberries. I offered some to Becky. She thankfully accepted them. I grabbed some more for myself. As I ate, I looked around. The forest was pretty dense beyond the hill, but I could see the scatterings of a town perhaps two miles away as the trees became sparser.

“
How much do you want to bet that any survivors fled into that town?” I pointed in the direction of the blinding sun.

“I guess it’s as likely as any other scenar
io,” Becky answered as she chewed. “I would totally take you up on that bet.”

I threw a blueberry down her shirt.

“Hey!” She exclaimed as she giggled. She certainly looked pretty, in a rugged sort of way. She shook her shirt to get the blueberry to fall out and then stood up. “I’m rested, are you?” she asked.

“
I suppose so. You want to share a smoke with me before we go?”

“Sure.”

I offered her one of the butts that we’d taken from our deceased companion and stuck the other in my mouth. After lighting them both, I took a deep drag. I didn’t smoke often, and had never smoked before the apocalypse, but now I had more pressing health issues to worry about. As I enjoyed the only cigarette I was likely going to find for a very long time, I remarked, “I wish we’d had these after last night…after sharing our-” I thought for a moment for the right word “-passions.”

“
You mean after you tore me up?” Becky responded. I think I turned red, despite the feelings of pride and accomplishment I felt with myself. She exhaled a plume of smoke and added, “don’t be embarrassed, baby. You did me good last night. I’m still sore.”

“We may have to do that again sometime,” I suggested.
By that I meant I couldn’t wait to do it again (and soon).

“Fucki
ng right,” she smiled.

At the bottom of the hill we came to another body.
I flicked the filter of my butt off into the woods and bent down to examine the freshly-killed corpse. It was a female. She looked to be in her mid 30’s, but neither Becky nor I could identify her. As a precaution, I smashed her head open with my hatchet.

Dead p
eople turned into zombies in very random intervals. I had seen it happen within a minute of death. Other times, I had seen it take three or four days. No one knew what caused the discrepancies, but no one bothered to figure that stuff out anymore. All the people who had been really smart and scientific were now dead. I guess they weren’t as smart as they’d thought. Or maybe they just lacked common sense but were good book readers. Either way, fuck ‘em.

A quick search of her p
ockets yielded nothing so we eagerly went on our way. When we got near the outskirts of the town we had seen, I began to spot structures through the trees: a trailer, a cabin, a few homes, and what looked like some small, municipal buildings beyond them. We headed for the cabin because it was the closest.

After we crossed a babbling brook,
Becky heard voices on the other side of a simple, wood fence. We both crouched down by a log and listened:

“That G
od-damned mother fucker had it coming.”

I looked over at Becky,
“Marcus,” we both whispered to each other.

I stood up but signaled for her to stay in place as a precaution. Ever so slowly and carefully
, I walked toward the sound of Marcus’ continued profanity and arguing. He was clearly talking to someone, though I couldn’t discern who.

“Do
you ever think before you open your fat mouth, you shit,” I called out as I hopped over a broken section of fence.

Marcus froze
as he saw me. “Nick?”

“Yeah. Everything okay?”

There was a split-second hesitation. His reply was, “Nothing’s okay, you should know that. Sure good to hear your voice again, though; even if you are a fucking dick sucker.”

I
surveyed the crew who accompanied Marcus. The Preacher was seated on a stump nearby. His giant, wooden cross rested across his lap. The golden crucifix that he always wore was missing; perhaps it was torn off by a branch as he’d fled through the woods last night. Two other men from our camp (who I didn’t know) were seated next to The Preacher. On the ground at their feet was a dead body.

“What happened?” I asked as I pointed to the body.

“He tried to steal our food.” Marcus said. He then leaned over and spat on the body. “We only had one knapsack full of food that we took out of the camp and he tried to run off with all of it.”

“Was it his knapsack?” I inquired.

Marcus hesitated.

“And his food?” I pressed the matter.

“Yes, it was, may God have mercy on his soul,” The Preacher spoke up. “He took it out of camp with him, but we all agreed to share the food and ration it until we could find more. This misguided fellow agreed to the terms last night, when we all met up after we got separated.” The Preacher made the sign of the cross and continued, “He should not have tried to go back on his word. We killed him not only for theft, but also because we could no longer trust him.”

I shrugged. “I guess he learned the hard way then, huh?”

“You’re fucking right he did, that ass-raper,” Marcus agreed.

“So Nick, is it just you?” The Preacher asked.

“No,” I answered and waved for Becky to come out. I knew that she could still see me through the fence opening.

She noticed my signal and trotted over to us. A
s she approached our group, she exchanged pleasant waves and greetings with everyone. Well, until she got to Marcus.

“What’s up baby?” Marcus said as he
ogled her. “Damn you look fine for just coming out of the woods!”

Becky snorted in disdain. “It’s
almost
nice to see you,” she remarked.

“You can’t get enough of old Marcus,” he laughed and
looked her up and down.

I was starting
to get pissed at him. I nearly told him to cut the shit when Becky got right to the point instead, “Do you guys know anything about the others?” She didn’t even look at Marcus as she asked, but rather beyond him, in the direction of the two men I didn’t know.

Marcus
took the liberty to answer anyway, “A few of us were killed by shamblers as we moved through the woods last night. Olivia was among them. I saw that myself. As for the rest, who knows? Maybe they’re still out there somewhere.”

“Aww, not Olivia,” Becky cried out.
She looked really choked up. The two women had bonded pretty close over the last few weeks. They had developed a rare trust. She turned away so no one could see the tears rolling down her face. Well, no one but me. I put my arm around her to comfort her.

Marcus eyed us with a mix of confusion and puzzlement.
Fuck him
, I thought.
The next time he hits on her I’m going to lay him out. He’ll learn.