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Chapter 78


Life sucks, and then you die.

I used to think people like AJ were just being emo, saying things like that, but now I know it’s true. That’s my new phsylosophy on life, or however you spell that word. I’m too lazy to look it up. I don’t care anymore. What’s the point? Caring only makes you hurt. I don’t want to hurt anymore.

I just want to be numb.



Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Week Twenty-Five

It was another bright, fall day in sunny Florida, but to Gabby, it felt like the entire base was stuck under a dark shadow. The gloom seeped from AJ, who sat scowling in his wheelchair under a nearby tree, watching the others work on the wall through his dark sunglasses. Even though Gabby couldn’t see his eyes, she could tell he was shooting murderous looks at her mother and Howie, who had forced him out there.

After the incident the day before, the other adults had decided AJ could no longer be left alone. With him out of commission and the others still gone, they needed all hands on deck to help finish the fence. They could spare no one to sit inside the house and supervise AJ, so they had wheeled him outside, where they could keep an eye on him.

Gabby, who knew how overprotective her mother could be, felt for AJ, but she didn’t blame them, either. It had scared her to hear Howie shouting for her mother again, calling for her to come quick and help AJ. When she’d followed the two of them back to the house and caught a glimpse of him slumped on the kitchen floor, her heart had leapt into her throat, and her mind had flashed back to seeing her father lying on the kitchen floor like that, in a pool of blood instead of vomit. At first, she’d thought for sure that AJ was dead, but it turned out he was only passed out drunk. Her mom had forced her out of the room while she and Howie took care of AJ, refusing to let Gabby see him until he was sobering up in bed.

Standing outside the door, she’d listened to the lecture he got from the two of them after coming to. She hadn’t heard her mother yell like that in a long time and was glad that, for once, it wasn’t directed at her. “Do you know how far this could set back your recovery?” Jo screeched at AJ. “You should be taking care of your body! Instead, you fill it with alcohol, to the point of unconsciousness, fall out of your chair, and land on the dirty kitchen floor, where God knows what sort of bacteria could have entered the open fracture in your leg. Are you suicidal or just plain stupid? Do you not realize how serious this is?? I didn’t want to scare you before, but I’ll put the fear of God in you now: If your leg gets infected, you could end up losing it. It’s very easy for a dangerous infection to get into the broken bone, and once that happens, the only way of saving your life will be to amputate your leg.”

As Gabby’s insides twisted queasily at the thought, she’d heard AJ shout back, “Fuck no! You think I’d let you cut off my fucking leg? How am I supposed to outrun the zombies with one leg? Fuck that; I’d rather die! I’d be dead anyway, with only one leg.”

“So you understand how serious this is, then,” her mother had replied icily.

AJ had muttered that he understood, and that night, Howie had made him watch while he poured the rest of the liquor down the kitchen sink. AJ’s mood hadn’t improved much since then. He was sulky and silent, only speaking when someone asked him something directly. They let him brood.

Gabby could understand how he was feeling. She wiped the sweat off the back of her neck with a towel, then brought her fingers around to the front, sliding them up underneath the stretchy choker necklace she always wore. As she massaged her throat, feeling the raised scar under her fingertips, she thought back to the dark days after her father’s death, when she had wanted to shut out the world, too. She thought about telling AJ that things would get better, but that wasn’t really true. The world was no better than it had been in those days; in fact, it was a lot worse. The pain hadn’t gone away, either. It had just gone numb. She didn’t blame AJ for wanting to dull his pain with booze.

Dropping her towel, she walked over to him and offered a tentative smile. “Want some iced tea?” she asked.

AJ didn’t return her smile. “Only if it’s a Long Island,” he replied, deadpan. Gabby wasn’t exactly sure what a Long Island was, but she knew it included alcohol.

“Sorry,” she said. “Just regular old sun tea. You sure you don’t want some?”

“No thanks, kid. I’m fine,” he muttered. He didn’t seem fine.

Gabby shrugged and walked away. “I’m going up to the house to get a drink!” she bellowed at her mom, who was tying a couple of log posts together while Howie held them straight.

“Bring me back one! Lots of ice!” her mother called back. Then she added, “Be careful!”

“I will!” Gabby sing-songed, unconcerned. The base was pretty much safe now, as safe as anywhere could be these days. Zombies popped up on the outskirts now and then, usually coming out of the water, but the area where the houses and other buildings were was clear. Still, out of habit, she picked up one of the guns that were lying on the ground nearby and, after checking to make sure the safety was on, slid its barrel through the belt loop of her shorts for the walk up to the house.

If Makayla could see me now, she thought with some amusement, imagining her best friend’s reaction if she knew Gabby’s mother let her carry around guns. She remembered how the two of them used to play Resident Evil on Makayla’s brother’s Playstation and wondered what Makayla would think about her becoming a real life zombie-hunter. It might have been cool, if only Makayla and Colton and her other friends were alive to see it.

She made the trek up to the small house she and her mother had started to call home and let herself in. A pitcher of sun tea was chilling in the fridge; she took it out and poured it into three tall glasses of ice. Standing at the counter, she gulped down one of the glasses herself, sighing with satisfaction as the cool tea slid smoothly down her dry throat. She finished her drink, then set the glass down by the sink and picked up the two full ones, carrying one in each hand. She walked slowly back towards the coastline, being careful not to spill. They had all brought water canteens down to the worksite that morning, but the water was like bathwater by now, warm from sitting out in the sun. The iced tea would taste wonderful to her mother and Howie. AJ would be sorry he’d turned her down.

These were the innocent thoughts flitting through her head as she wandered back to the unfinished wall, the glasses of tea sweating in her hands, the gun slapping against her thigh. As she walked across Bayshore Boulevard, which ran parallel to the water, she could see AJ slumped in his chair, his chin drooping to his chest, and her mother and Howie still bent over the wall, adding another wooden post. She could also see what they did not: a trio of twisted bodies, lurching out of the bay behind them.

“Mom!” she screamed, and the glasses of iced tea fell from her hands and shattered on the pavement as she broke into a run. “Howie! Look out! Behind you!”

They both looked up, hearing her but not understanding at first. By the time they turned around, it was too late. The zombies were practically on them. Jo swung wildly with the hammer in her hand, connecting with one zombie’s skull, while Howie ran for his gun. AJ’s head snapped up, and he started screaming, “Get me a gun! Get me a fucking gun!”

Howie charged toward him, gun in hand. He dropped the gun into AJ’s lap, but even as AJ picked it up and took aim, Howie was already behind the wheelchair, dragging it backward by the handles.

“No!” AJ protested. “Let me fight! Go help Jo!”

“Help my mom!” Gabby screamed, as she made it to them. Down by the water, her mother had managed to take down the first zombie with her hammer, but she was still surrounded by the others. Gabby raised her gun and aimed carefully at the one furthest from her mom. She took her time lining up the shot, and when she fired, it was dead on. The zombie dropped, a bullet in its brain.

“Good shot, kid,” she heard AJ say, but she could not reply. Her mouth fell open in horror as she watched the third zombie fall upon her mother, knocking her to the ground.

Gabby could see Jo struggling under the zombie’s weight as it scrabbled over her. She managed to grab it by the shoulders and thrust it upwards, trying to throw it off her, but its waterlogged body was too heavy. Her arms trembled with the effort of holding it up, out of biting range. Howie took off running towards her, but Gabby knew he’d never get there in time. Desperate, she raised her gun again, seeing if she could line up a clear shot. It was going to be close, but if Jo could just keep the zombie up and off her for a few more seconds…

Then she heard her mother scream. It was a scream she’d only heard from her once, the night her father had died – raw and guttural and terrible. For Gabby, that was all it took to force her into action. She held her breath, locked her elbow to steady her shooting arm, and thought, Daddy, please, as she squeezed the trigger.

Her shot was low, but at first, she thought it was good enough. It passed through the back of the zombie’s neck, missing the brain, but severing the spinal cord. She could tell by the way its hands stopped clawing and its legs went still, yet its jaws went on snapping. The zombie was still a threat as long as it could bite, but at least now her mother would be able to push it off her and get away.

So why wasn’t Jo moving?

“Mom?” she called, her voice shrill and panicky. Get up… get up! she begged silently, as she watched Howie reach her mother and pull the paralyzed zombie off her. He jammed the barrel of his gun into the center of its forehead and pulled the trigger, exploding its brains all over the ground. Finally, the snapping jaws went slack. But still, Gabby’s mother didn’t get up.

Gabby raced toward her crumpled form, her heart pounding, her breath coming in shallow gasps. “Mom? Mom?!” She skidded to a stop, dropping to her knees at Jo’s side, and stared down in horror. Her mother’s hands were pressed over her heaving chest, unable to hide the red stain spreading steadily across her shirt underneath them.

At first, she assumed the zombie must have been bitten her, and she thought, She’ll be okay. AJ got bit, and he was okay. But then she watched as Howie gently slid Jo’s hands out of the way to assess the damage, and she saw the wound, saw where all the blood was coming from: a little, round hole in the center of her mom’s t-shirt. And she understood. It was not a bite, but a bullet hole.

She had shot her mother.

Even as she stood there, shaking her head in denial, a part of her could piece together what had happened. The bullet must have gone straight through the zombie’s scrawny neck and hit her mother in the chest. She hadn’t thought of that when she’d taken the shot. She’d only been trying to help, to save her mom’s life…

But there would be no saving Jo now, not with bright red blood spurting out of her with every last beat of her faltering heart. Instinctively, Gabby already knew it, knew it because she had watched her father bleed out almost the same way. Still, she threw herself over her mother’s body, as if to stopper up the blood with her weight, and clung to her, crying, “Hang on, Mama… hang on…”

Hang on for what? There was no one here who could help her. The only one in their midst with any real medical training was Jo herself, and she knew she was dying. She was still semi-conscious, though she was fading fast, and Gabby heard her voice rasp in her ear, “Be strong, Gabrielle. Be strong, and survive.”

To Howie, she pleaded, “Take care of her.”

“I will.”

“And take care of yourself. And AJ.”

“I will, Jo.”

Gabby couldn’t stand to hear her say her goodbyes. “No, Mama,” she begged, burying her face in her mother’s neck. She pressed her body firmly against her mother’s, holding onto her as if she could somehow tether her to life. Just as Jo had once held her in her arms, trying to stop the flow of blood from the stab wound in her neck, Gabby held onto Jo until she felt her chest stop heaving and her body relax beneath her, as the life rushed out of it.

Even then, Howie had to practically pry her away. She stiffened, resisting, at first, as he tried to pull her into his arms. Then she went limp and collapsed against his chest, sobbing, while he smoothed her hair and silently tried to soothe her.

“Jesus,” a low voice rasped, and Gabby looked up from Howie’s shoulder to see that AJ had wheeled himself up. He stared down at Jo for a long time, his sunglasses pushed back on the top of his balding head, his features twisted with grief. Then he looked back at the two of them. “Holy shit, Howie… are you hurt?”

Howie glanced down at himself. He was covered in blood. So was Gabby. But it didn’t belong to either of them. “It’s Jo’s,” he muttered. “I’m fine.”

Selfishly, Gabby thought, You shouldn’t be. It should’ve been your blood, not my mom’s. I need her. We all need her… She knew it was a horrible thought, but she couldn’t keep it from coming. She wished it had been Howie, the hemophiliac, who was attacked. But it wasn’t the attack that killed her, she realized. It was the bullet. It was me. My fault.

She started to sob wildly again, screaming, “I killed her!”

Howie pulled her to him again, muffling her cries, saying, “Shh… it’s not your fault. You were trying to save her. If you hadn’t taken the shot, the zombie would have gotten her first.”

But Gabby could not be comforted. She cried until she was out of tears, until she was so exhausted that she finally collapsed. Howie carried her back to the house, where she slept fitfully, her sleep disturbed by nightmares. Waking brought her no relief, for when she opened her eyes, she remembered that her real life was the worst nightmare of them all.

For the first time in her life, the thirteen-year-old fully understood AJ’s desire to drink himself to death.

***