LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (12 page)

My stomach cramps and I instinctively grab my stomach in agony. Part of me wants to find the nearest person and bring them here, to show them all that Jason and the girl had done. I had joked about it, but they were seriously trying to build a New Jerusalem. Hell, they had grown tomato plants. That was enough to make me feel the strange sensation of hope in my soul that I had not felt in a very, very long time. What if there was a way to fix this? Well, maybe not fix this, but endure this. Wasn’t that worth sharing, worth trying to get help to discover what it is we can do? But at the same time, I’m not going to survive unless I eat.

I look at the green tomatoes on their vines and feel the terrible dilemma inside my soul. What kind of a monster am I, if I eat the last few tomatoes on the planet? But they’re not even real tomatoes, they’re immature, nowhere near ripe. I look at them and feel the cramps ripping apart my body and I know that I’m a monster. I killed the one man that I’ve met in months that is trying to do something to make the world right again. I killed his beautiful fiancée and I am now about to eat the fruits of their labors. I close my eyes and think about the monster that I am and try to tell myself that this is a dying world. Putting a Band-Aid on a burn victim does nothing to save him. But doing something is better than doing nothing. I look at one of the six pots in front of the window and notice that one of them is grass. I can see the tiny green blades poking up and feel a shaking sense of wonder at the sight of the blades. To hell with it, they’ll grow back.

Reaching out, I take one of the tiny, grape-sized tomatoes from its vine and put it in my mouth. It tastes earthy, organic. I place it between my molars and with a single movement, I bite down, crushing the fruit in a single bite, filling my mouth with sweet and bitter juices at once. It hardly tastes like a tomato, but I don’t care. It’s something I can swallow. I feel my eyes welling with tears as I instinctively reach out and pluck another from its vine and place it in my mouth and bite down with ravenous hunger. Again and again, I rip the tomatoes from their vines, moving from plant to plant, watching leaves fall as I do so. Stuffing tiny tomatoes in my mouth until I can feel the acidic juices rolling down my lips and chin. Finally, as I take the last one, I look at it for a lingering moment, picturing the world. I see a tiny green world, but that isn’t right anymore. It’s a dead world. So I put it in my mouth and bite down.

Even here, the waters are grayish brown. It reminds me of Lake Huron, back when all of this started. There are big white clouds in the sky, peeking through them is the pale blue tapestry of the sky and I can’t help but feel a swelling sense of hope in my heart. I took my shoes off some time ago, letting my torn and frayed jeans walk with me along the warm beach, well away from the surf as I unsling the shotgun and carry it in case there’s another ambush. I am worn. I am tired. But I’m not far now. Gainesville had been a hard fight, but I got the answers I was looking for. The journey to the coast had been shorter than I had expected as well, but not without its run-ins. I am surprised at how many people decided to migrate to Florida. The refugee camps were some of the most horrifying places I had ever seen. Zombies roamed in packs in those places, killing anyone who dared venture close and feeding on the fetid, rancid carcasses of the dead that still lingered there.

The clouds parted and I could feel the kiss of the sun on my face and stopped for a moment, basking in the glorious warmth of the sun, thankful to have made it this far.

The girls had left a note, warning me that they were no longer at the dorms. It was in Lexi’s dorm that I found the note, written in glittery pink ink and left on her pillow, folded nicely with ‘Daddy’ written on it for me. The University of Florida had been a nightmare. College-aged packs of killers roamed freely with assault rifles, shooting down anyone that came in sight, but I made it. Stealth was the greatest weapon a lone operative could use in this new world. Rather than going in with my shotgun blazing, it was best never to fire it at all. I had grown to appreciate quietly killing my threats from behind, slicing open their throats or stabbing them in the base of the neck while covering their mouths. I’m not proud of what I’ve had to do or what I’ve seen to get here, but it was worth it. Or it would be.

The beach house is painted navy blue with baby blue trim and a white door on the high deck that had a staircase that wound down to the sandy beach. Seagulls circled in the air, dropping down onto the beach to feed upon the bloated, salty bodies of the dead fish. A whale has been tossed onto the land by the surf down the beach and an army of birds desperately fight for mouthfuls of meat. There is a watchman at the top of the stairs with a rifle. He points his rifle at me as I approach. I pretend not to see him, hoping he’ll keep quiet a little longer before he starts shouting. Every word he’s inevitably going to shout at me could draw others to our location.

“Stop right there,” the watchman shouts angrily, as if I had punched his mother in the face.

I stop. “I’m looking for two girls,” I shout up to him.

“No girls here,” he lies to me. “What do you want?”

“I’m here for my daughters,” I shout back to him. “Alexandria and Valerie Duwain.”

The man lifts his rifle from me and looks at me, pulling down his bandana and lifts up his goggles to get a clear look at me. “The hell you say?” the man shouts down to me.

“You heard me,” I shout back.

“One second,” the watchman points his rifle back at me and calls over his shoulder. “Kelly, get Lexi. Tell her some man out here wants her.”

I wait patiently until a band appears around the watchmen. It’s hard to tell who among them are men and women, they’re all bound up in bandanas and goggles and heavy clothing. There’s a moment where no one says anything. I stare at them while I wait for Lexi to show up. I spot assault rifles, a few hunting rifles, and one guy is holding what looks like a bastard sword. There’s a moment where I stand still and fear that they’re not here. I watch and wait impatiently, my heart pounding. Then the crowd begins to part and a familiar face steps to the front. She has cut her hair short, above her shoulders, but before she removes her bandana and sunglasses, I know that it’s Lexi.

“Daddy?” she calls in a confused, unsure voice.

“Hi, Sporty,” I call up to her. “Been a while.”

“Daddy!” she screams before rushing down the steps to the beach. The band of twenty or so survivors behind her watch in amazement as their companion lunges over the railing and lands into the sand, sending jets of it shooting up all around her. She doesn’t stop for anything. Lexi keeps running for me as I sling my shotgun over my shoulder and throw open my arms. She dives into my arms, wrapping her legs around me and I realize that she’s crying. I spin her in my arms, laughing while she giggles and cries in wondrous excitement. I feel as if I’ve died. This can’t be real. After so long, this cannot be her. I set her down and put my hands on her face, brushing back her hair and seeing my little girl all grown up and still alive.

“Lexi, Sporty,” I laugh with delight. “Where’s Val?”

“She’s out with a band,” Lexi says, wiping the tears from her eyes. “We’re scouting a group of migrants moving through the area. They look like they might set up camp.”

“Sporty, I’m so glad you’re alive.” I hug her again.

“Daddy, how did you get here?” She pushes back and looks me in the eye. “How the hell did you get all the way here from Michigan?”

“I walked,” I answer.

Suddenly my eyes are open and I’m looking up at a poster for some teen romance movie that came out five years ago, a dreamy hunk staring me down in the most awkward feeling I’ve had in days. Slowly I push myself up and look around the room, wondering where the hell I am before an overwhelming sensation of pain explodes within my body. Not only are my ribs and left arm sore from the beating I received yesterday, but something is happening with my stomach. I feel it, discovering that it’s as hard as a rock. Part of me wants to throw up—no, compels me to throw up. I jump from the bed and rush to the nearby bathroom and throw open the door. I puke in the sink, scattering a curling iron and bottles of moisturizer and tanning lotion. My vomit is as green as salsa verde and the stench makes me wonder if my entire stomach has liquefied. There’s a burning in my colon and I’m afraid that my ass is going to catch on fire, so I throw open the toilet and unleash whatever is declaring war on my intestines.

I’m worried that something happened in the fight with Jason. What if he ruptured something? Am I bleeding internally? I grab the roll of toilet paper and marvel at the feeling. I haven’t felt toilet paper in a very, very long time. Standing up and finishing my business, I hurry downstairs and fetch a gallon of water that I take back up to the bathroom in the oldest daughter’s room and pour it all into the tank before flushing down my rancid shit. I use what’s left in the jug to wash out the sink, watching it swirl down my salsa verde vomit.

My head hurts. I think I slept too long. I walk back into the room inspired by Emerson and look out the window to the south. I can see buildings on the horizon. I’m not far from Dayton. I should keep going, but southeast. Keep the city on the horizon as I go, keeping the vast expanses that make up the farmlands. My course is well plotted so far. I need to find a gas station now that I’m closer to a larger town. Hopefully there is still one that hasn’t been lit on fire or exploded from its gas line or fuel storage tanks. I want to be able to get a map to further plot my course. But first, I feel like I need to bury poor Jason and his beautiful fiancée.

I cannot explain this burning desire inside of me, but I know that it’s the right thing to do. This was a good man and a good woman who I killed too early in their lives. If anything, it should have been me who died. That way, my girls might be alive right now with hopes of a better future. If Jason could have found a way to restart growing food, then maybe everything that we as a people feared could have been diverted. I shame myself, thinking of all these hypotheticals in a world of fantasies and fairy tales. I’m here, in the real world and it is still dying. I know this more than I know anything else.

In the mirror in front of me, I am looking at a gaunt, cynical, old man. My face is a field of thick hair, speckled with gray and a nasty wound on my left cheekbone that will be a fearsome scar one day, if I survive. My eyes are surrounded by dark rings, but those eyes that stare back at me are cruel and monstrous, the eyes that Jason saw yesterday—eyes of a man who is willing to do anything. No wonder he had tried to kill me. My hair is getting long. I grab my knife that I had used to kill Jason with and begin grabbing handfuls of hair, sawing at it with my knife and tossing it into the sink. I doubt anyone will ever find this house, but if they do, I’m sure a sink full of hair will give them pause.

I’m turning gray around my temples, probably from the stress of living day to day. My skin is blistered and I have no doubt that I will die of skin cancer if I live to be old. My skin is a deep, dark red that is now peeling everywhere. I’m sure I’ll look like an entirely different person when I finally find the girls. Unlike in my dream, they won’t be able to recognize me. I don’t care if the oldest daughter had germs, when I’m done cutting my hair, I grab her toothbrush and start brushing my teeth with it. My gums begin bleeding almost immediately and I decide to take her brush with me. It has been weeks since I used one and God knows what will happen to me if my mouth becomes a festering cesspool of bacteria and germs. Mostly I want the taste of vomit out of my mouth. Swirling a drink of water in my mouth, I spit it out with a sigh. I take one last look at myself in the mirror and shake my head. I’m turning into a monster to save my girls. I suppose that’s justifiable, but that doesn’t mean I like it.

Taking the water from the counter downstairs, I stuff as many bottles as I can hide underneath the mattresses in the five bedrooms in this enormous, brick house. I keep a few on the counter just so anyone who happens to find this place will be satisfied with that and not go searching for more. This is a pipe dream. If anyone finds this house and in the condition that it’s in, they’ll toss it. But just in case I’m ever back this way, I stock the house in multiple hiding places. Part of me wants to go find something to cover the well with, just so no one else can use it. I want it all to myself, just in case. Call me greedy, but that’s the person I’ve become. When I’ve hidden enough water in over a dozen different locations throughout the house, I stuff my pack with as many bottles as I can carry. Uncoiling the rope, I tie three gallons along its length and sling it across my back. It’s going to hurt carrying this much, but I’ll be grateful later on.

I head back down into the basement. It hurts to walk down the stairs. My breathing is painful and I have no doubt that Jason broke a few of my ribs. If I’m lucky, he just bruised them, but I don’t think that’s the case.

Looking over the basement one last time I grab a pair of bolt cutters, a hammer, and a hacksaw in case I come across anything I might need them for. I figure that the bolt cutters will get me through anything locked or fences, as will the hacksaw. The hammer will get me into anything that’s boarded up as well as breaking through glass. I figure, another weapon is another weapon. Rearranging my pink backpack, I sling it over my shoulders and adjust myself, testing the weight in case I need to run at all on my journey. It’s manageable. If it gets to be too much weight, I can cut loose the gallons of water and lighten my load.

I need to head back to the interstate and follow it closer into Dayton. There is some serious scavenging that needs to happen if I want to continue onward. Already, my stomach is beginning to cramp and churn. I’m fairly certain that I’ve been poisoned by the unripe tomatoes. I don’t regret eating them, I just regret eating as many as I did. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I ate too many. My hands are shaking and I feel weak from throwing them up. I consider hanging around another day, but I can’t do that. I can’t wait another day. Every day that I’m lounging around, feeling better, it’s another day that Val and Lexi are in danger and closer to death.

Looking at the map that Jason set up I decide that it’s best to avoid all of the little red dots that he’s posted on the map. Part of me wants to take the map he has here and use it to get myself around Dayton, but that doesn’t seem right. He was doing something here. He was trying to build a better world and I can only hope that someone who isn’t a horrible monster like me will come along and have the patience and the time to help him build his new world. After all, it might be the only thing that can save us. In fact, part of me wants to get the girls and come back here. I want to come back here and finish what Jason started. I’ve already made a mental note about everything he’s gathered and everything he was trying to do. There are designs for building a new Earth that I think a group of survivors could totally accomplish, if they’re equipped, supplied, and patient. So I decide to leave the map, in honor of the man that I’ve killed. I’ll start his project in Florida, once I find the girls. I’ll set up a pot full of planting soil and I’ll figure out how to make healthy compost before it’s too late, and I’ll try to grow a garden in a greenhouse or something. That way, if someone finds this farmhouse, they’ll set up Jason’s vision and there will be two locations with the same dream. We’ll both regrow the world and who knows, maybe we’ll be the first two civilizations of the new Earth. I smile at the thought of it. Wouldn’t that be something? Me, a regular Romulus.

Thinking this over, I head back up the stairs, struggling with the weight and the pain in my chest and arm. I keep my arm close, worried that he broke something. Already a nasty purple bruise has wrapped around my left bicep and across my back. I had stared at it for a long time this morning after brushing my teeth, contemplating my moral standing. If he broke me, then I can’t help but feel like a dead man walking, especially if anything is bleeding inside of me.