So this virus kills almost everyone on the planet, who then come back from the dead and walk the earth as zombies, hungry for human flesh, while a ragtag group of survivors band together in a military base and fight to stay alive.
It’d make a great story, if only I were just reading it, instead of living it.
Sometimes I wonder, what’s the point of even writing it down? Who’s gonna be alive to read it? But I guess Riley’s right – we should keep writing, if not to keep our story straight, then to at least keep our sanity.
It’s hard not to go crazy here. It’s so hot, and the only escape is to go zombie-hunting in one of the air-conditioned cars… which, of course, my mom won’t let me do. I can’t stand it anymore!!! I want out!!!
We finally got some books in this place, so I’ve been reading to try to take my mind off things. It hasn’t worked so well. I used to love to read, but that was in my old life, when I could curl up in my air-conditioned house and hear birds chirping instead of zombies howling. And guess what? My old life is dead. The old me is dead, too. I’m a different person now… reborn, just like the zombies.
My English literature teacher said that in a good story, the main character changes from the beginning to the end. This really would make a good story, then, cause I’ve definitely changed.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Week Four
Sticky. That was how Gabby felt: sticky all over. Her back stuck to the wall through her damp tank top. The backs of her legs stuck to the floor tiles. The wisps of black hair that had fallen out of her ponytail stuck to the back of her neck. Even her fingers stuck to the pages of her book.
She had started sneaking off to the church bathroom to read, not only because it was private and quiet, but because it the coolest spot in the chapel, with its tiled floors and walls and water readily available to splash on her face and the back of her neck. Still, by mid-afternoon, the hottest part of the day, it felt just as sticky as the rest of the place. There was no escaping the heat and humidity.
Sighing in frustration, she set the book facedown on the floor next to her, still open to mark her place. It was one of the books Kayleigh and Howie had brought back from their supply run a few days ago, a trashy paperback romance, the kind her mother might spend a few dollars on at the supermarket and then sell for a quarter at the next garage sale. It had a shirtless man with long, blonde hair on the cover, riding on a white horse with a woman whose boobs were foaming out the top of her long, old-fashioned dress. Gabby had snatched it out of the pile, not only because she knew her mother wouldn’t want her to read it, but because she needed to read something frivolous and silly, something that would give her some relief from the suffocating church.
It hadn’t worked.
The book was silly, alright, using words like “orbs” and “tresses” to describe the characters’ eyes and hair, “bosoms” and “loins” to describe other parts of their bodies, but it hadn’t offered her the escape she’d longed for. She couldn’t lose herself in the story and pretend she was a fair and busty English maiden, torn between the wealthy baron her father had chosen for her to marry and the poor blacksmith’s apprentice she secretly loved. The smothering heat of the chapel and the distant moans of the undead reminded her that she was just a sticky, sweaty, skinny teenager, possibly the last living girl in the world. Her story was a lot more interesting than the one in the book, if only she were reading it, instead of living it.
That’s a good one. I should write it in my diary, Gabby thought. She reached for the notebook sitting at her other side, which she carried around with her inside the chapel so that no one could snoop in it. She had jumped on Riley’s suggestion that they all keep a journal, starting her post-apocalyptic diary at once. She’d kept a diary at home, and this one, it turned out, wasn’t so different. In it, she recorded, as she assumed the others did, the events that had taken place since the Osiris Virus had spread and her thoughts on their new life. But she also wrote about other things, things from her old life, things she missed: spending time with her father, sleepovers with Makayla, going to school, kissing Colton… They were things she didn’t like to talk about, things she certainly didn’t want anyone to read about, especially her mother.
Now she picked up the pen she kept tucked in the spiral of her notebook, flipped open to the next blank page, added the date (writing daily was the only way she could keep track of what day it was), and started writing about what a good story her new life would make. It was the kind of book that would be made into a movie, and they’d get an actress who was really twenty-two to play her, the thirteen-year-old heroine. Maybe Vanessa Hudgens… except that Vanessa Hudgens was probably a zombie, like the rest of the world. Zac Efron, too. Maybe Zombie Makayla would finally get to meet Zombie Zac, and they’d fall in love and have zombie babies together. Zombie Vanessa wouldn’t mind because, well, she was a zombie. Gabby laughed to herself as she jotted this down, too. Then the words she’d written began to blur, as her eyes filled with tears.
Dead. Zombies or not, they were all dead. Makayla. Vanessa Hudgens. Zac Efron. Colton. Her father. Everyone she’d known, except for her mother, was dead. Her old life was dead. In a way, the old Gabby was dead, too. She was a new person, reborn just as the zombies had been.
That was good. Crying, she wrote that down, too.
A tear spilled from her eye and splattered wetly on the page in front of her, smearing the ink. She pushed the diary aside and stood up, peeling her legs off the floor. She walked to the counter and leaned over the sink, frowning at herself in the big mirror. Her reflection was a pitiful sight. Her naturally brown skin looked pasty and yellow under the buzzing, fluorescent lighting, and there were dark, puffy circles under her red, watery eyes. She could see tear tracks through the layer of grime on her face. Her hair was plastered to her sweaty scalp, looking oily in its lank ponytail.
They had soap and water on hand, so that they could sponge bathe, but as there were no tubs or showers in the chapel, Gabby hadn’t felt properly clean since the night she’d spent in the temporary lodging facility on base, the night before she’d awoken to the commotion of the first zombie attack. She longed for a cold shower. She’d even take a swimming pool – and she knew there was one on base. Two, in fact.
She’d seen one of them on the map Kevin had given them: a pool, just a few blocks west of the chapel. Easily within walking distance. The other pool was even closer, at the base club. It was essentially right down the street.
She knew the club was where AJ and Howie had gotten into trouble a week ago, but a lot had changed since then. Kevin and AJ had been taking groups out every day to lure out and kill the remaining zombies on the base. AJ had come back, just yesterday, complaining loudly that he was running out of zombies to shoot and would need to go outside the base more often to get his fix. Gabby had no desire to leave the base again, not after she’d seen what the world outside was like, but she was desperate to leave the chapel. If the base was almost free of zombies, then surely, there was no harm in it. She knew where the guns were, and she knew how to shoot. She’d even killed a few more zombies on her last trip out. As long as she was armed, she would be fine.
These were the arguments she would make if anyone caught her trying to sneak out of the chapel. But she didn’t plan on getting caught. Kevin, Brian, Gretchen, AJ, Riley, Nick, and Spunky were all out hunting the remaining zombies, and her mother had lain down in one of the offices, after staying up for the overnight watch. That left only Howie and Kayleigh, who were on guard duty outside the chapel. Kayleigh would be on the roof – she had taken a liking to AJ’s sniper position, not because she enjoyed shooting zombies, as he did, but because it put her well out of their reach and gave her a prime spot to sunbathe. All Gabby had to do was stay close to the building until she was around the sanctuary side, and then she could run under the cover of trees, and Kayleigh would never notice her. Howie would be harder to get past. He was standing outside the only door that wasn’t boarded up, and she knew there was no way she could sneak through it. She would have to be cleverer than that.
She left the bathroom and returned to the multipurpose room, which still served as their main living quarters. She stashed her diary and her book underneath her blanket and put on her shoes. Then she opened the front door and poked her head out. “Howie?” she called. He was standing just a few feet away, gun in hand. “My mom wants to talk to you for a minute.”
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly clever, but it would do. Howie and her mom had gotten closer ever since he had told them all about his hemophilia. As a nurse, she understood his condition better than anyone else and would know what to do for him if he got hurt again.
“Where is she?” Howie asked, stepping just inside the doorway.
“In one of the offices. Here, I’ll keep watch for a few minutes while you go find her,” said Gabby, taking the gun from his hand.
Howie looked hesitant, but he shrugged and nodded before striding off to find her mother. Knowing she had only a minute to make her getaway, Gabby bolted the instant she was outside the chapel. She ran around the side of the church, staying close to the building to avoid Kayleigh’s line of sight, and across the parking lot that stretched behind it. It was the same parking lot she and her mother had raced across with Kevin to get to the chapel on the Day of Unholy Resurrection. If she’d known then that she would be trapped in that same chapel for a month, she might not have been in such a hurry to get there.
It was too hot to run for long, but Gabby had a plan. In this lot, parked close to the lodging facilities on the other side, was her mother’s SUV. In the back of the SUV was her bicycle. If she could just get to her bike, she wouldn’t need to worry about outrunning the zombies. Her bike would go much faster than them, without nearly as much effort from her. It seemed so obvious to her now, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. She could go anywhere on her bike, as long as she stayed alert and didn’t let the zombies surround her.
She spotted her mother’s white Escape ahead and sprinted towards it, already panting in the thick, humid air. She didn’t stop until she slammed against the hatchback and then, trying to catch her breath, she pulled at the handle. Her heart sunk. All of a sudden, her brilliant plan didn’t seem so brilliant anymore.
The SUV was locked.
“Keys!” Gabby hissed. She smacked the hatchback window again and kicked a back tire, furious with her oversight. “Why didn’t I bring the keys?”
She thought quickly. The keys to the Escape were probably in her mother’s purse. And her mother’s purse was… where? She frowned, drawing a blank. As she wondered why she couldn’t picture her mom’s purse in the chapel, it occurred to her: the purse wasn’t in the chapel. The few possessions they’d brought with them to the base were still in the room where they’d spent that first night and fled from first thing in the morning. Her mother’s purse, along with the key to the car, was in the lodging facility in front of her.
Gabby gazed uncertainly up at the three-story dormitory, remembering how she and her mother had raced down the stairwell to escape the newly-reanimated zombies in hot pursuit of them. She wondered if anyone had been in the building since. If not, how many zombies were still trapped inside? Was it worth the risk just for her bike?
She heard a distant moan that made her blood run cold, despite the heat. No, she decided, it wasn’t worth it. The pool was only a couple of blocks away. She could make it easily without her bike.
She didn’t see any zombies, so she headed towards the road at a fast walk. She crossed Tampa Point Boulevard and started up a side street marked Durnstone Avenue. She could see tennis courts up ahead on the right and knew she was going in the right direction. The club and the pool had to be nearby. She slowed down her pace as she walked by a grove of trees on the left, savoring the small bit of shade they provided. It didn’t occur to her that they also provided an excellent hiding place for the undead.
She had just stepped out into the sunlight again when she heard a rustle and a moan behind her. She turned, her heart leaping into her throat, just in time to see a lone zombie emerge from the trees which had concealed it. It was smaller than the ones she was used to seeing, and she realized as it staggered closer, its bony arms stretched out stiffly in front of it, that it was a child. A girl, younger than her. Behind a curtain of stringy hair, the little girl’s face was starting to rot, the skin peeling away from her cheeks and forehead in dead sheets, and the smell was rank.
Gabby aimed her gun, but hesitated, her finger poised over the trigger. The zombie child was wearing soiled pink pajamas with the Disney princesses on the front. Gabby took a step back, then another. She was about to turn and run without firing her gun when the zombie girl let out a blood-curdling moan. That did it for Gabby. Remembering what she was really dealing with, she adjusted her aim and closed her eyes as she pulled the trigger. The wet sounds of brain tissue splattering into the trees and the soft thud of a small body hitting the ground told her she’d hit her target.
She didn’t open her eyes again until she had turned around, only to see that she was not out of danger yet. The noise had brought other zombies out of their hiding places. They were shambling toward her from all directions, their moans rising in a discordant cacophony that made Gabby’s blood run cold. Where had they all come from? She thought most of the base had been cleared out.
Trying not to panic, she raised her gun again, but she didn’t know where to aim. There were too many of them, and in a matter of seconds, they had surrounded her and were closing in. They never broke from their slow, shuffling pace, but that didn’t make them any less menacing. Gabby fired into the ring, turned, and fired again without taking the time to aim. A couple of zombies fell, but the others stepped right on top of them, filling the empty spaces.
There was no way to take them all out herself, and no way to escape. Out of other options, Gabby did the only other thing she could: climb. Flipping the safety on her gun, she tucked it down the front of her shirt and launched herself at the nearest tree. She grabbed the highest branch she could reach and scrambled up the trunk. Rough bark and twigs scraped her exposed skin as she squeezed between the leafy branches, climbing higher, until she found a thick branch to perch on that was high over the zombies’ heads.
Breathing hard, her heart racing, she peeked down through the leaves at the zombies below. They were looking up at her, their stiff arms reaching toward her, moaning hungrily. She pulled the gun out of her top and poked its barrel through the leaves. She undid the safety and fired a few shots. The zombies’ heads were easy targets from her vantage point, and they collapsed one by one.
She pulled the trigger to take down a particularly big zombie, still dressed in his military fatigues, but her gun just made a hollow, clicking noise. Nothing came out. Panicked, she squeezed the trigger again and again, but it was no use - she was out of bullets.
Gabby looked down, surveying her situation. Despite the dead zombies on the ground, her tree was still surrounded by the undead, reaching and moaning. She had lost her only weapon, and she could see no way to get past them. So she opened her mouth and screamed.
“HEEEEEEEEEEELP!” she shrieked, in the loudest, shrillest voice she could make. “HELP ME!!! HEEEEEEEEELP!!!”
The chapel wasn’t far away, she reassured herself between screams. If Kayleigh was still on the roof, she would hear her, right? She had to!
But it was Kevin who came. Kevin, Brian, and Gretchen in the Hummer. Gretchen was driving; she mowed right over several zombies as she parked the massive Hummer under the tree. Kevin and Brian fired shots through the open windows, quickly killing the rest of them.
“It’s alright, Gabby!” Kevin called up, stepping out of the Hummer and looking up through the branches. “You can come down now.”
Shaking, Gabby maneuvered back down the tree, dropping onto the Hummer’s roof below. “Thanks!” she gasped, as she jumped down from the hood.
Kevin opened the door for her to climb into the back seat. To her surprise, he got in after her. “May I ask why you were out climbing trees alone?” His deep voice was deadly calm, but she could sense the reprimand in it. It reminded her of her father’s.
Gabby wiped the sweat off her forehead and leaned forward, sticking her whole face in front of the air conditioning vent in the back seat. She closed her eyes in relief, savoring the blast of cold air. “I couldn’t stay in that church another minute,” she admitted, eyes still closed. “I just had to get out. I was gonna go to the pool. I’m sorry,” she added quickly. “It was a dumb thing to do.”
“Yep,” Kevin agreed.
“I’ll never do it again,” she went on in a rush.
“I’d hope not.”
“I promise!”
“Good.”
Straightening up, Gabby looked over at him, perplexed. She had expected a lecture, not a series of one-word responses. He was their leader, their military man; he knew something about discipline. “Are… are you gonna tell my mom?” she asked him tentatively.
He didn’t answer her at first, but then a wry smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think I’ll need to.”
She looked up. They had already reached the church. Her mother was pacing outside with Howie, and the moment she spotted Gabby in the back seat, she charged the Hummer and wrenched open the door. “You get back in that church this minute!” she shrieked, grabbing Gabby by the arm and yanking her out of the back seat. “Let’s go! Now!”
As soon as she’d wrangled Gabby back into the sweltering chapel and closed the door, she rounded on her, her dark eyes flashing. Gabby noticed they were red-rimmed and puffy. “Do you know what a scare you gave me, taking off like that?!” she cried. “When Howie came and said you’d disappeared, my heart almost stopped!”
Gabby hung her head. Her mother tended to get dramatic when she was upset, but still, she felt guilty for worrying her so much. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I sure hope you’re sorry! After all we’ve been through, you go and gamble your life on… on, what, a-”
“Trip to the pool?” Kevin supplied, letting himself in to the chapel. He still had that same wry smile.
“What?! The pool?? That was it – you wanted to go to the pool?!” Jo stared at Gabby as if she’d grown a second head.
Before she could think a way to justify her stupidity, Kevin stepped in again. “You can’t blame her for wanting some relief from this heat. It makes everyone a little crazy.” He rested one of his large hands on Gabby’s bare shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Let’s just be glad we got her back in one piece.”
“Yes – thank God for that!”
“Thank you,” Gabby mumbled again.
“Don’t mention it. Looked like you were doing pretty good on your own there, kid.”
Gabby smiled up at him. “I would have been okay, if I’d just had some more bullets. I ran out.”
“That happens when you don’t plan ahead,” he said, but he returned her smile. “Next time, you should just ask.”
Gabby cast a resentful look at her mother. “If I asked, the answer would be no.”
“Maybe for now. It’s still dangerous out there; we haven’t killed them all. Your mom’s right to be overprotective. She just cares about you and wants to keep you alive. We all do.”
“I know,” said Gabby, as Jo nodded emphatically. “I just hate being cooped up here. I wish I could come out hunting with you more.”
“Gabby, I just don’t think that’s a good idea,” started Jo, shaking her head, but Kevin smiled.
“Maybe not, but you did give me a good idea. A way to lure out the rest of them so we can clean this place out, once and for all.”
Gabby felt her eyebrows lift. “Really? How?”
Kevin chuckled. “Bait. Did you see how they were all standing around that tree, looking up at you. Maybe we can use that to our advantage…”
“Not using Gabby!” gasped Jo.
Kevin shook his head. “No…” he said thoughtfully. “Not Gabby. We’ll need a volunteer…”
“Me,” said AJ, as if on cue, raising his hand as he strode into the chapel. “I’ll be the bait. Bring it on, bitches.”
“Language?” Jo cut in automatically, with a meaningful look towards Gabby.
Gabby snorted. “Mom, I know the word ‘bitches.’”
Her mother turned to her, eyes flashing dangerously again. “Don’t push your luck, young lady. You’re in enough trouble as it is.” But then she smiled, the fire in her eyes softening to a twinkle, and opened her arms.
Smiling guiltily back, Gabby drifted forward and allowed herself to be pulled into her mother’s sticky embrace.
