After brushing my teeth and rinsing with a bottle of water, I wash my face and step out on the porch, where a set of chairs is placed beside a pretty wrought-iron table.
The previous owners, reportedly in Florida when this all broke out, clearly enjoyed antiques, and it shows in the lovingly placed items throughout their house and yard. I hope they’re alive and holed up in a large and diverse antique shop somewhere near the ocean.
The early dawn morning passes uneventfully, and I rouse the others a few hours later, finding Cole resting on the small antique couch in the living area. If my heart didn’t hurt at the distance he put between us by sleeping alone, I’d be amused at the sight of his large form tucked on the tiny sofa.
Sucking in a deep breath, I arrange a placid smile on my face and shake his shoulder, escaping the room after I see his eyes flutter. Cowardice wins the morning, but I’m too heart sore to meet his dark eyes, which I won’t be able to avoid for long anyway.
Through the front window, the sun peeks over the skyline in beautiful shades of red and orange. Both the sunrise and sunset in Arizona can be amazing sites to behold. We gather around, looking out, and share a can of peaches for breakfast, the succulent fruit and syrupy sauce a tease for better things.
Cole is his ever-present quiet self as we depart the house, which feels more like a shrine than the home it once was, and the rest of us follow along. I make sure to close the door behind me even as I wonder if it matters.
Today, our goal is to search the houses around the high school and bring anything salvageable back there for extraction. We spend the morning ransacking the homes and find a few bodies, decayed and shriveled from the first days of the end, but thankfully they’re less smelly than others.
One such couple, found clutching each other while lying on the couch, catches my attention, and I’m struck by the view. Did they kill themselves? Was it easier to face the end together or more brutal to watch the one you love die? Shivering, I push the macabre thought away because going down that road leads to a depression bender. And I don’t need any help in that regard; I fight those demons daily.
A few houses over, we find members of our previous community holed up in a home toward the end of the block and just feet from the forest, a steep incline separating the house from the dark pines. They apparently took refuge and never left, a mystery considering the escape right at their doorstep.
What were once struggling to survive human beings lunge at us from the door when we open it into the basement, and the wretched smell of multiple decaying bodies causes my throat to burn. My eyes well, the acrid smell overpowering to the senses, and I swallow down a good dose of bile.
Cole pushes me back with his hand and raises his weapon, bringing it down crushingly on the forehead of the first Turned at the top of the stairs. The zombie’s face caves at the impact, black goo oozing from the hole. The fact that his bones almost melt beneath the weapon like taffy between your hands has me spewing what’s left of the peaches I ate for breakfast onto the floor.
Honestly, the sight of some of this shit never fails to surprise or sicken me. Michele joins in my dry heaves while the guys step forward and battle it out.
Thankfully, the zombies are stuck in the stairwell, allowing the men to send them to their death like cattle in a chute, but what becomes increasingly confusing is just how many damn zombies were crammed in the basement. No wonder nobody made it out.
A few sneak through the hole around the men, and Michele and I move grimly forward to handle the stragglers. And after killing at least fifteen of the suckers, the momentum finally dies down.
My last kill is a young girl with what was once a pretty red dress, complete with a bow tied around her waist. I don’t recognize her, but she’s fresh and so more than likely part of the now fallen community. Why did these people stay in this basement? What were they hiding from?
We have no answers and no new supplies. Those in the basement had either been bitten or contaminated by the flash flood of newly turned zombies in the tiny space, and they were stuck down there with no food in sight.
We leave out the back door, and I spare a last glance at the little girl in the dress and how pretty she must have felt putting it on and twirling around in it before the devastation, pain, and anger superseded her joy. She was bitten on the arm, which lays limp against her torso, missing skin and cartilage in the form of a perfect set of teeth.
Our continued search drums up a few bags of flour, sugar, and baking soda, some canned food, and bottled water that someone hoarded from the community. We also lucked upon ammo, which had been moved and stored after the community came together.
We did not find more survivors or even the zombies that took over the town just weeks ago, making us wonder where they went.
Does it mean the ranch is also in danger? If the zombies walk long enough in the right direction, they’re bound to find food, and they’re single-minded in their goal of just that.
Although a perfect place for raising cattle and growing food, the ranch is not fortified to withstand a large group of zombies, and it would be a shame to have to abandon what we have been working so hard to save. We need those cows and pigs. We need the fresh milk and the beef and bacon the animals will yield someday. Perhaps it’s time to sit down and figure out how to fortify our little oasis before it’s too late.
We load up what we can in a couple of vehicles left behind, but by the time we finish, it’s dark again, so we crash in the high school infirmary. The black hallways, eerie silence, and echoes are way too creepy to wander around in after dark.
I’m not the only one that feels that way. We all crowd into the adjoining rooms, sharing the two beds within and laying on the floor where we can. I fall asleep sitting up with my chin on my chest and wake for my shift lying on the floor with my head resting on Cole’s chest.
It warms me to think of him rearranging me in my sleep, and I hug the feeling close because these days, I take the positive as it comes and cherish it as if it might be the last.
Somehow, I got lucky and landed the last shift before morning once again. Poor Manny ended up with a shift right in the middle and, still nursing his fatigue from the night before, looks a little rough around the edges.
Manny is lean and wiry with pretty brown eyes to match his tan skin and longish dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. He always has a smile and a wink for me and I’m perpetually grateful for his presence in my life.
Once upon a time, while I struggled with our existence in this shitastic world, Manny spoke about his purpose for being left behind and how he truly felt it was to help others who couldn’t help themselves. And I agree because his presence has saved my sanity on more than one occasion.
It’s not the same with the others. Michele and I have a rocky past filled with betrayal and hurt, and although we’re better than ever, we can’t go back to what we had before. Cole and I have a similar bag full of feelings we’re trying to let go of, but Manny, Manny didn’t know me before.
All he knows is the badass chica who fights for herself and those she cares about, and in Manny, I found a friend that will last forever. He’s also the one I can see parts of myself in, reflecting a hardened soul, symbols of the lives we’ve led and the hard decisions we had to make. We’ve done what we had to, to survive long before the apocalypse, and we recognize in each other that spark that makes us who we are.
Only recently have I realized that Manny likes me as more than a friend, which saddens me because I love Manny like no other, but I can never have romantic feelings for him. He’s like a brother to me. He’s well aware of this as my sole source of relationship therapy during my troubles with Cole, but even so, I struggle with how to be his friend without encouraging something that can never be. I would rather cut off my arm than hurt this amazing friend.