State of Decay (Omnibus (Parts 1-4)) (22 page)

We all ran to the back room, shining our flashlights as we went. When we got to the freezer and Jude opened it, the smell of two year old rotting food welcomed us. Nina began shaking her head.

“I get claustrophobic,” she said softly. I looked inside the freezer and had a moment of panic myself. It was a huge freezer, but with twenty people jammed into it for god-only-knows how long, it wasn’t something I was looking forward to. Manuel shocked the hell out of me and grabbed Nina by the hand for a second.

“We’ll get through this together. All of us. Just like we all have survived everything since the beginning, well survive this too.” Nina gulped and nodded her head as Manuel and Jude entered first and jerked two shelves out of the freezer and threw them into the storage room. They made quick work of shoving all the rotten food containers out into the storage room … and not a moment too soon. I heard a loud cracking sound as everyone froze in place, not making a sound, and then I heard the gurgles of the zombies who were filling the cafeteria. They had arrived.

“Inside, everyone. Quickly.” We all obeyed immediately and when we were all inside, we shut the door behind us and bolted it from the inside. Manuel turned his flashlight on and shone it around the room. We might
have had enough room on the floor for all of us to sit. Might. And no telling how long we were going to be stuck in the freezer. I just prayed our theory would be correct and the zombies
would
move on when the herd swept through.

“Are we going to be able to breathe long in here?” Someone whispered. Manuel shown his light up into the corner of the ceiling of the freezer.

“There’s a fan vent there where the cold air used to blow through. We’ll have oxygen coming in from there. We’ll be fine,” he reassured. “How many of us have flashlights?” Jude, Manuel, James, and I all had flashlights on us.

“Good,” Jude said wearily. “We’ll turn on one for a few minute periodically.” A boom from outside of the freezer rattled the door. The zombies were in the storage room. They began banging on the freezer.

We were in for a very long day and night.

S
everal hours later, we were
all sitting on the floor and listening to the constant sounds of the undead right outside of the freezer door. I felt like I was about to lose my shit in the dank, dark room, shut up with nineteen other filthy survivors and hoping the zombie wave would go through our area soon.

“Man, I’d give anything to be in my old man’s beach front condo right about now. Zombies or no, I’d sure like to hit some waves.” A young man from Nina’s group had spoken and the entire room groaned in agreement. “What about you guys?” he asked.

“Alaska. Might be cold, but that could mean fewer zombies,” Nina answered hesitantly.

“A deserted island. No zombies. Just me and wide open beaches, pineapples, and coconuts.” Someone else chimed in.

“Piña coladas,” someone agreed with a laugh. Laughter floated through the room. I smiled at that. A frozen beverage full of pineapple and coconut? Sounded like heaven to me.

“My Grandmother’s house,” a young girl said softly. We all sobered up. “She made the best banana nut bread and pot roast.” I smiled into the darkness. The small things we took for granted from before would mean so much more to us now. Retrospect was a bitch.

“A fully functioning, zombie free, Mexican restaurant,” I said into the silence. Everyone laughed. “Loaded tacos? Homemade, fresh salsa?” I added for extra emphasis. “Am I right?”

“Margaritas,” the same person who mentioned the piña coladas added in. Everyone laughed again.

Silence once again fell over the group and all that we could hear was the sounds of the zombies on the other side of the door, clawing and gnashing their teeth against the door as they tried to get in.

Several more hours later, Jude switched his flashlight on to check his watch. It was late—really late. Darkness should had already fallen and that meant we had to stay put and wait out the zombies. We were going to end up stuck in the freezer overnight and that prospect did not sound all that enticing to me. I scooted over next to him and laid my head on his shoulder. His muscles were tense. No matter what happened, he would feel responsible for this group. Even if he couldn’t have foreseen the other group attacking us, even if half the group weren’t our people to begin with. Now we had to get these people to safety. I understood that. I felt the same way.
A few moments later, his body relaxed enough for me to wrap my arm around his and doze off on his shoulder.

I’m not sure how long I slept, but I woke to the faint pounding and groans of zombies close by.

“No change?” I whispered.

“They seem more sporadic now. Less
enthusiastic
,” he explained. I listened to the noises and I had to agree. They didn’t seem quite as insistent and frantic as they had before.
This is good
, I thought.

“What time is it?” I asked softly.

“It’s already two o’clock in the morning,” he answered quickly. Holy crap. I’d slept that long? I turned on my light and flashed it quickly around the room. Almost everyone was asleep.

“So, what do we do next, Jude?” He sighed and I knew he had to be exhausted. No telling how long it had been since he’d slept last.

“Once the sun is out, we make a run for it. No matter what … we can’t stay shut up in here forever. We have to get to the bus and
pray
that at least half of the zombies have moved on.” I squeezed his arm and then entwined my fingers with his.

“We have several hours then. Why don’t you try to rest?” He immediately stiffened next to me. “You won’t be any good to the group if you can’t shoot worth a damn because you’re dead on your feet. There’s no way you’ll oversleep,” I said gently. Jude’s shoulders slumped and his body relaxed for the first time since we’d entered the freezer. Pretty soon his head was in my lap and I was stroking his hair as he snored softly.

I’m not sure how much time passed, but the next thing I knew, Manuel was kicking my foot and whispering loudly. I jumped, which caused Jude to jerk off of my lap, his body immediately ready for any threat.

“Do you hear that?” Manuel whispered loudly. I strained my ears. Jude’s entire body was thrumming with adrenaline.

“What is it?” Nina asked from the back of the freezer. I switched on my flashlight and shone around the room. Everyone was wide awake and listening intently.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said into the silence. I flashed my light back around to Manuel’s smiling face.

“Exactly,” he answered. Silence. There wasn’t any banging or any gurgles. Just the sweet sound of
nothing
. Jude flashed his light down at his watch. It was almost six thirty in the morning. I grabbed onto his arm and gave it a squeeze. We had to move. No matter what happened, this was our best chance.

“Alright everyone, let’s get ourselves prepared to move,” he whispered into the room. We all stood, grabbing our weapons and our packs, getting ready for whatever lay on the other side of the door. Whatever it was, we were all going to face it together. Jude cleared his throat.

“I suspect that even if the wave of zombies has blown through and even if the area is pretty clear, there will be enough zombies left in the area to give us a fight to get to the bus. Don’t do anything stupid. No guns. Just knives. Get to the bus so we can get the hell out of here.” He paused. “Understand?” We all answered the affirmative.

I gripped the handle of my knife in my hand and prepared for the worst case scenario, which would have been hordes of zombies just outside the doors, or even in the cafeteria area. Manuel unbolted the door and the room took a collective breath in anticipation. I adjust my grip and tightened my fist around the hilt of my blade. Manuel raised his hand and pushed the door. It didn’t budge. I glanced up at Jude. But his face was a mask of shock and “oh shit”. Manuel and Jude put their shoulders to the door and heaved with all of their might. The door came open slowly, pouring light into the room and our sensitive eyes from the ruined storage doorway. I stumbled through the doorway and came up right behind Manuel and Jude. They were just standing there.

“What is it?” Nina gasped in horror. The freezer emptied out and instead of running for the bus like we’d decided while in the freezer, we all stood there in slack-jawed awe and confusion.

Bodies were everywhere. The undead laid in heaps and I’d never seen so much rotten sludge in my life. It was everywhere, coating the entire room. I walked forward and glanced around the room, my head feeling dizzy and disoriented. What the hell was going on?

“Someone took them out?” The spikey-haired girl asked.

“Who would do that?

“Why would anyone do that and then just leave?

“What the hell happened to their bodies? They look mushier than normal.”

So many questions asked, but no one seemed to have any answers. I caught Jude’s gaze and the look on his face told me he was as land-blasted as the rest of us.

“Madre de Dios,” Manuel muttered as he stood in the cafeteria doorway, making the sign of the cross. We began moving out of the storage room, pushing into the cafeteria behind him. The cafeteria was a slaughterhouse. We barely paid attention to the two zombies as they charged. One of them slipped on the gunge that coated the floor. Manuel dispatched both of them without any help. There had to be close to fifty bodies piled in the room.

“No one touch any of the bodies and try to stay out of the mess as much as possible, we don’t know what we’re dealing with here,” Jude said in the silence.

The carnage continued all the way out to the bus. Bodies and gore. Everywhere. We only had a dozen zombies near the school bus to take care of. It was all over in less than ten minutes and then we were piling onto our bus, everyone enveloped in the kind of shocked silence that follows massive devastation. I could see it on everyone’s faces. They were scared. They were not used to the rules changing. We were used to knowing our surroundings, knowing who our enemies were and how to defeat them. We’d all survived under the certainty that we knew how to beat the odds, how to adapt to our new environment. No one said a word when Manuel climbed onto the bus, shut the doors, and started the bus. No one said anything when we pulled off of the school property.

Even when we drove through the city where the bodies now outnumbered the shambling zombies fifteen-to-one, no one said a thing. We were in shock. Was it possible that our world had changed again right before our eyes and without warning? Would it be possible for us to adapt again and to survive through even more changes?

“What’s happening?” Nina whispered from a seat over as she stared out the window.

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out. It will be okay,” I said, not sure if I was trying to convince her or myself.

Jude walked over to my seat and sat down heavily next to me. We sat there for a few minutes as the bus slowly drove out of Gastonia. Jude picked up my hand and interlaced my fingers with his, squeezing them gently. I looked up into his face with so many questions on the edge of my lips. So many fears of what we would have to face in the near future. But I didn’t voice any of that.

“We’re going to be okay,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Yes we are,” he answered. I took a deep, steadying breath. When he smiled at me and leaned over to place a small kiss on my lips. I knew. I knew it would be okay. No matter what we faced … we would do it together. No matter how great the struggles we’d encounter on our journey, we would tackle them head on, knowing that our lives, however long or however short, would be better because we had each other.

E
xactly eight weeks ago, the
undead corpses that seemingly had overrun the entire globe began to collapse to the ground in droves, finally and truly dead in the most literal interpretation of the word. Many of them not only dropped, but their corpses, unable to contain all the putrid fluid their bodies had been hauling around, just …
exploded
. We’re still trying to figure out what happened. I’m sure that there will be a more scientific explanation provided at some point in time and by smarter people than I. But simply put—after eight hundred and sixty-six days, the earliest parasite-infested zombies, who had not fed on enough humans after that first, horrific day, could no longer support the ever-multiplying and ever-feeding parasites inside of their corpses. The result was an unbelievably messy demise, which included the skin of the undead bursting and the mushy, putrid innards exploding from the inside out.

For four weeks we went topside to scout out all the surrounding areas and to keep an eye on what was happening. We were wary and concerned by what was occurring, scared that somehow the parasites would be able to survive on the outside of the bodies or had even evolved, making it possible to take on a new, living host by means that were new and unknown to us. We wore face masks for the first time since the outbreak, hoping we hadn’t been dealt an even shittier hand than before. The fifth week, we decided to take our chances by moving and burning a large quantity of the corpses in our area. We took precautions for our group, though, and stayed away from the base for days while we did so … just in case any of us became infected.

When it was clear that none of us had contracted anything by coming in contact with the bloated corpses, we began the long and exhausting cleanup process in our area. The cleanup was not without its risks. The world was not zombie-free by any stretch of the imagination. From everything we knew, we could only deduce that those zombies who were first infected had been the ones to drop off in scores in the previous weeks. But if the zombies had fed often or if the zombies had been turned later … those were all still shambling around in search of their next happy meal, the next human they could sink their teeth into.

The population of the living was still devastated by the sheer numbers of dead and undead. The living were still in the minority. But I could feel it in my bones that we wouldn’t be for long. Maybe I wouldn’t see the day that we were once again the majority. Maybe it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime, but it was going to happen. It was just a matter of time now. The plan was simple. Wait while the undead continued to die off, play it smart, don’t get
killed, and take out as many of the bastards as you could while you still had breath left in you.

Yeah, it was going to happen.

So, as I helped throw another body onto the pile we’d made right on the outskirts of Midtown, I thought of all the things that had happened to us recently. We’d lost so many people that we cared about. We’d taken in more than thirty survivors since the day we came back to the base on the school bus from Gastonia. We’d cleared the entire area surrounding the base and had reinforced the perimeter fences. We’d also begun building brick walls around it—soon we’d be able to go topside just because we wanted to see the sunset and we wouldn’t have to worry about the undead overtaking the base.

Earlier in the day we’d seen a very official group of soldiers enter the base and immediately shut themselves up in meetings with Major Tillman and Captain Parsons. Another sign that things were changing for the good. We’d grown as a group and we’d caught a teensy glimpse of what the future could be. And the future didn’t look quite as bleak as it had two months before.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that any of us were naïve enough to think that the days of death and sorrow were completely behind us, but I would say that we were all firmly on the very difficult road to believing that we had a
chance
. A chance was really all that anyone could ask for.

We had so much work to do to make the world a safer place for our future, for our children’s future. And the absolute truth was that the world would
never
be the same as it had been before. Humanity would never be the same. But humanity had survived overwhelming loss and damning odds to come out on top. I could only pray that we would continue to do so.

I wiped my brow and turned away from the pile of undead to stare at the “Welcome to Midtown” sign a few feet away with a small smile on my face. Jude came up behind me and followed my gaze to the sign.

“What are you thinking, Mel?” he asked as he rubbed his hand along the back of my neck, lifting the ponytail off of my hot and sticky neck to let the air hit it.

“I’m thinking how much has changed since the last time I saw that sign,” I said softly. “I’m thinking about how much has changed since I walked into town by myself three days after my dad died.”

“He’d be so proud of you,” Jude said softly. I glanced up to the blue sky above me and heard a bird singing a sweet tune in the distance.

“Yes he would be,” I answered softly. “And he’d have loved you.” I smiled over at Jude and as he smiled back at me, his eyes twinkling with love and happiness, I felt another one of the rips my heart and soul had suffered over the years mend itself. Oh, the scars would always be there, but they would be only a faded memory instead of a gaping wound. We both turned and got back to work making the world a little safer—a little more
worth living for
.

We were no longer a people without hope—a people without the promise of light at the conclusion of a seemingly never-ending tunnel filled with death and darkness.

We were beginning to have
hope
again.

And where there is hope, there is life. 

And that’s more than any of us had had in a very long time.