LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series (60 page)

“Sorry, everyone,” I say loudly, hoping everyone hears me as I make my way back toward our room. “Sorry I woke you up. It’s been a long day,” I add to Marko.

“No worries, Val,” Marko says sweetly to me.

“Yeah, we understand,” Katrina adds from somewhere down the hall.

I pass the open door to the storage room once more and walk back to the bedroom, looking at the hole in the wall and shuddering at the thought of someone watching me. Greg apologizes to Marko again and I look at him as he enters. As the door closes, I feel conflicted about what I want to say to him. At least he found some way to get his underwear on before following me out into the hallway.

“Babe,” he says, cutting me off at the pass, “I think we’ve all seen each other naked at one point or another. It’s been a long day and I think it’s best if we just put this behind us. I’ll put something up to cover the hole tomorrow and we won’t have to worry about it.”

“You think I’m lying?” I ask him, hurt and cut deeply.

“No,” Greg answers, “I think it’s been a long day.”

I wake up to an empty bed. I hate empty beds, even after we’ve had a fight. I reach over, stretching and usually find Greg there, waiting for me. But not today. I open my eyes and look over at the pillow that’s cratered with his head’s imprint. I recognize it from every other morning that we’ve had together. The sheets are tossed back on his side and I feel a sadness inside of me. I don’t like waking up alone. I don’t like this feeling of emptiness in a lonely room. I roll over and look at the black hole in the wall and see only the flat darkness. I think about that eye, staring back at me, and I shiver.

Greg wasn’t the knight in shining armor that I expected him to be for me last night. In fact, I’d been rather disappointed with his excuse that we’ve all seen each other naked at least one time or another. That didn’t help me from feeling any less violated. I stare at the hole, wondering which of my fellow survivors thinks it’s okay to spy on people having sex.

Maybe it’s not worth thinking about. Maybe it’s better to just let it go and focus on leaving. I stretch and throw the covers off of me. Everything is bright and harsh in the morning as I look at the window facing the sunrise. I try to gauge what time it is and how much of the day I’ve lost based on how far the sun is above the horizon. I think it’s about seven right now, but it’s hard to tell. It’s not like time means much of anything in the end of the world. In fact, I think that it means less than it ever did. Even with a destination planned, it’s not like we have a deadline in getting there, beyond our own desires and drives. I throw my legs over the side of the bed and stand up, stretching again.

Most mornings I do yoga, but today isn’t the kind of day that I feel interested in much of anything. I look at the closet and the wardrobe where I know one of my most prized possessions sits. Years ago, Dad gave me a backpacking pack when I turned seventeen. It was one of the top of the line awesome products that prides itself in its durability and strength. I’ve gone backpacking with it more than a dozen times and know how to pack it. In fact, when I heard that we were heading out for the beach house, it was the first thing I packed. Now, it looks like I’m going to be packing it again.

Most of what I need is still packed in there. The only things I’ve taken out are the food supplies that I added to the pantry, and some clothes. Reaching down in the bag, I pull out the Sig Sauer that my father gave me secretly for Christmas one year. I remember him giving it to me and telling me to hide it and not to tell my sister. We used to go practice at the shooting range when Lexi was sleeping over at friends’ houses. I’m sure he did these sort of little secret activities with Lexi too, but I like to think that they were all our own, just the two of us. When I smuggled it into the dorm room, I was petrified that I’d get caught, but I never did. I was always safe.

I have everything we could possibly need, from a basic tarp shelter with ropes to iodine tablets, and even a magnesium fire starter. My father raised me to love the outdoors and now the entire world is one giant mysterious adventure and I don’t like the feeling of going out there unprepared. As I’m taking inventory of the cookware, I can hear others in the living room talking and it draws my attention. I quickly pack the clothes I’m going to need, extra socks and underwear, as well as my most durable pairs of pants and shirts. I’ll shower and change into my clothes, but what I look at in earnest, staring at it, wondering if I’ll need it, is the surplus gas mask I’d bought when I heard about the dust storms. I’d been terrified that the dust might be toxic and people were selling apocalyptic goods for less than ever. It was one of the few things that were in demand and still reasonable. I discard it. I don’t know what to expect out there. All I can do is picture my father and it sends shivers up my spine. Something terrible is out there and I want to be ready for it, but he didn’t have a gas mask. If he made it without one, so can I.

The commotion in the upstairs common room subsides before I can sling my backpack over my shoulder. I pass down the hall and see that everyone has gone downstairs already. That’s fine with me. I’m sure they’re all getting ready for what’s to come today. Everyone’s getting ready to leave. I wonder how Marko and Katrina are going to be today. I can’t imagine leaving Greg behind, even if he is being exceptionally difficult lately.

Depending on what we find out there, we might be gone for over a week. If something happens and we have to find another vehicle, then we’re going to be in big trouble. Who knows what dangers are lurking in ambush for people like us? I think about my father and wonder how long he’d been travelling. It must have been a long journey. I’d looked at the map. He seemed to have plenty of adventures along the way, indicative of all his markings and symbols. I don’t want any adventures. I want to find whoever Jason is in Dayton and I want to come back for the others. I just want all of the mystery around my father’s last words to be resolved. I make my way down the stairs, hoping that we’re not gone more than two weeks. I don’t want to leave Skye, Devon, and Katrina here alone for the rest of their days. I don’t like the sound of that. There is safety in numbers and I don’t like the odds of three people alone. If there are any kind of marauders or survivors looking for a place and they stumble across the beach house, I don’t think they’ll be able to hold our sanctuary on their own.

In the dining room downstairs, which has become a large pantry for the kitchen, I find Marko, Noah, and Lexi going through supplies, setting up their own bags. I know that Lexi is just like me. I know that she’s been told time and time again by our father that there are certain things that you absolutely must take with you, and then there are things that don’t mean anything. As I look at the table, I’m seeing a lot of things that we’re not going to need. I know that Lexi has to be aware of this, but she’s too busy with her own backpacking pack. Just like the one my father got me, Lexi got her own bag that she could take out into the world with her.

“What are you guys doing?” I ask them as I reach the bottom of the stairs, putting my pack next to the wall.

“Gathering up supplies,” Marko answers. “We’re trying to get as much as we need before Devon gets up and starts staking claim to all of it.”

“He’s upset about the whole thing?” I ask him.

“Not so much the part where we leave,” Noah chimes in, stuffing a box of unopened cereal into his duffel bag, “as the part where we take our portion of the food.”

“Christ,” I shake my head. “Well, don’t take too much. We only need enough for a week or more and we’ll ration out our supplies.”

“You think it’s going to take a week to get to Dayton?” Lexi asks me with a disapproving look on her face. I don’t know why but I feel like slapping her more and more whenever I see her. It just must be a phase that I’m going through right now or something.

“If we’re lucky,” I tell her. “If we ration out the supplies, we can live off of a week’s good supplies for a very long time.”

“What if it takes a month? What if it takes much longer than that?” Lexi faces me.

“Then we’ll deal with that as we go,” I answer. Walking past her, I make my way toward the shower. She glares at me and I can feel her eyes burning into the back of my head. I don’t turn around and fight with her. I’m tired of fighting with her.

Filling the water heater is one of the tasks that we’re used to doing every day. Going down to the ocean and getting buckets of water, boiling it, and then dumping the water into the water heater is usually Devon’s task. I assume that he’s doing that right now. It’s one of the easier jobs and he loves to do it as an excuse to get out of the other jobs that are needed to be done around this place. He’s A.D.D. as shit and he hates standing in one place forever, so he avoids guard duty like the plague. I don’t mind as long as he’s willing to watch water boil all morning. I pass him on my way into the bathroom. It’s my day to shower this week anyways and I’m happy that I get the chance. We have everything down to a system. It has to be systematic and it has to be enforced. If anyone slips up, then there’s someone always suffering because of it.

“Getting in one last shower?” Devon asks me.

“Better while I can,” I smile softly to him.

“Well, it’s all ready for you,” Devon answers.

For the first few months of our isolation, Devon was as high as a kite. When he got down to his last gallon Ziploc bag of pot, he started rationing it out, but that didn’t last too long.

His most prized possession is a wind-up clock that he uses as his alarm clock. The first few weeks he started setting an alarm after his pot ran out, we were all on the brink of murdering him. Luckily, we all got used to it, even us light sleepers. We all just sort of ignored him as he’d wake up at four in the morning, just like he used to before the end of the world. It’s at that time that he goes and gathers the buckets of water, boils them in an old cast iron bath tub before condensing the steam and using the new, fresh water to fill up the water heater. He’s set up the water heater so that the sun does all the work to pump the water up from the beach and his insulation keeps it warm. It’s all brilliant and I don’t understand a word of it, but Devon has been invaluable with things like that. He knows the difference between photons and electrons and stuff that is boggling to most of us. I only wish that when Tony and the others were around, he’d been a little more sober. They might have seen this place as a little more durable and homely. But then again, maybe they all had to leave so that he could step up to the plate and actually start pulling his weight. Most of us just let Devon do his thing until we need him. His genius gives him leeway like that.

I don’t spend much time in the shower. I know that it’s Skye’s turn today as well and I don’t want her to be short-changed because of me. I use the last of my travel shampoo in my stockpile. I’m probably not going to get another chance to use it, so I decide to lather like there is no tomorrow. Greg will like that. He loves to sniff my hair after I’ve used shampoo. I step out of the shower and brush my teeth. We haven’t had toothpaste for months now and I don’t miss it as much now as I used to. When everyone left, they dropped off all their hygiene supplies, thinking they’d find more. Now we all use a quarter of a lid of mouthwash to keep ourselves smelling fresh. We’re almost out of that too.

Standing in front of the mirror, I look at my naked body. I’ve lost a lot of weight since the Collapse, but that’s not saying much. Everyone has lost weight. I’ve tried to stay strong, toned as much as I can with yoga. I go work out in the gym downstairs in the sub-level as often as possible, but there just isn’t enough protein. I reach down and grab my sports bra and pull it on, thinking that it’s probably best to look as gender neutral as possible out there. Pulling on my underwear and then my newest pair of jeans, I think about what my father was wearing. He was wearing clothes for endurance, for sustainability. There’s no sanctuary out there, no shelter. As I pull on my tank top and then flannel button-up shirt, I look at myself and feel like an explorer, an adventurer. As strange as it may sound, I feel like I’m getting ready to head out into the wilderness once more with my father.

Putting on my old hiking boots that lace up past my ankle, I can hear shouting outside in the dining room. No doubt Lexi has pissed someone off again, pushing them to the point of anger and frustration. I hate how she has a way of doing that to everyone we know. Throwing open the door, I gather my hair into a ponytail and smile softly at Skye who is patiently waiting outside.

“Bad?” I ask her.

She rolls her eyes at me. I’m guessing it means it’s Lexi.

Sure enough, Lexi is shouting at Devon who is holding back a can. The whole room is filled with everyone except for Greg and Henry who are only God knows where doing whatever. I suddenly have the infuriating idea that Henry might be up guarding again. If someone gave him a gun, I’m going to flip out.

“What’s going on?” I demand, stepping into the room.

“Your sister is taking everything,” Devon gestures at the bags in front of him. “You realize that there are three of us who aren’t going on your doomed little crusade out into the middle of nowhere right? We have to survive here.”

“That’s fine,” I say to him, completely agreeing. “Lexi, Marko, Noah, put back everything that you got from the pantry.”

“Are you kidding me?” Lexi snaps. “This isn’t Devon’s fucking pantry. This is food that we’ve all stored up. We’re entitled to take a share of it for ourselves. And this is all we’ve got.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her. “Dad said that there were supplies in the truck when he arrived. We’ll go see whatever he has in the truck and we’ll take that with us on the journey. I’m sure we’ll find food along the way too.” I don’t believe that we’ll find food along the way, but it sounds nice. I just don’t want everyone going at each other over something as meaningless right now as a can of corned beef hash. Devon and the others have needs, just like we do. “But, Devon, we’re going to need ammunition. You’ve got to give us that.”

“I’m not giving up anything,” Devon snaps back. “And whatever you’ve got in that truck isn’t just yours. You can’t just claim everything your dad brought in that truck. It’s not like an inheritance here. When he pulled up, he offered that stuff to everyone, not just you guys. So you can’t just stake claim to it.”

“Are you kidding me, Devon?” I look at him, thoroughly pissed at him being this greedy right now. “So you just want everything?”

“No,” Devon snaps back. “I think you’re entitled to ten percent of the stores. The rest should be left for those who aren’t going out on a suicidal mission.”