Savannah's Only Zombie (Book 2): A New Darkness (10 page)

CJ woke up early the next morning. The sun was
just beginning to peek over the trees. After staring at the ceiling for several
minutes, he decided to get up. He passed through the living room quietly.
Jeremy was still asleep on the couch; his mouth was hanging open. CJ tried to
muffle his chuckling as he got dressed.

Once in the kitchen, CJ grabbed a few granola
bars and stuffed them into the pockets of the fleece pullover he was wearing.
He wasn’t hungry now, but he might be later and he didn’t want to have to make
his way down from the roof just for a snack. He grabbed his rifle from the gun
rack near the door, made sure it was loaded, and slung it over his shoulder.

From there he made his way upstairs and cracked
the door to his parent’s bedroom. They were both still asleep. Just as
stealthily as he moved downstairs, he crossed their room to the window. He went
to open the window and as he did, it let out a noisy creak. Wincing, he looked
over to his parents.

Still asleep.

I’ll need to find some WD-40 to take care of
that later,
he
thought.

He opened the window the rest of the way and
climbed out onto the roof, sliding the window back down behind him.

It was much colder today than it was the day
before.

Is it December yet?

He couldn’t remember. He knew what day it was,
but the calendar date was something he had not kept up with.

He climbed the slope of the roof up to the “his”
spot, his rifle bouncing against his back. Once there, he sat the rifle down
next to him and sat cross-legged.

The orange and red of the sunrise was beautiful
against the still, cloudless blue sky. It made him think of the time he and his
Aunt Laura went to the beach on Tybee Island to watch the sun come up.

But the vibrant light show did not distract him
from why he came up here.

His eyes scanned the property and the tree line.

No threats.

No zombies.

He felt himself relax.

Did he expect there to be anything out there? A
part of him told himself not to worry, not to be afraid.

I am not afraid,
he reassured himself.
Just
cautious.

It was not fear that drove him to the rooftop
every day.

It was necessity.

The adults tried to make it look like they had
it together, and since his uncle arrived it had gotten better, but CJ knew it
was all a show. For his sake maybe? Or for their own? Either way, he knew they
meant well. But it left a huge hole in their defense. Yeah, once the fence was
up, it might be better, but until then, someone had to keep watch. If there
were zombies on the property when they got here, who knows if some are still
lurking around? CJ would not let another one of those things sneak up on him.

He swore it to himself.

The wind kicked up and up on the roof, it was
downright chilly. He rubbed the sleeves of his pullover.

Once the sun gets up some more, it’ll warm up
some.

In the still quiet of the early morning, he
heard twigs snap behind him.

He spun around, grabbing the rifle in the
process. With the gun pointed towards the backyard, he looked for the source of
the noise. In the shifting morning light, he could see movement by the trees.
He looked down the scope to where the shadows moved.

It was a deer.

Again, he felt his body relax. He let out a sigh
of relief.

It took everything in him not to shoot the good-sized
buck. He counted ten points on its rack. It grazed near the edge of the woods,
unaware that a rifle was sighted on its heart.

Better not shoot unless it’s an emergency. Don’t
want to give everyone a heart attack shooting this close to the house.

He set the rifle down.

You lucked out this time deer. Don’t let me find
you out in the woods.

The deer jerked its head towards the woods. Its
ears stood straight up. It heard something.

It bolted as zombies began to shamble out of the
trees.

The hairs on the back of CJ’s neck stood
straight up. He counted seven. He only had five shots.

Crap, crap, crap…

The zombies were too preoccupied with the
fleeing deer that they did not notice the boy up on the roof. They slowly made
their way in the direction of the deer, who was putting good distance between
itself and the dead. Out of the seven, the one bringing up the rear seemed to
lose interest in chasing its prey. It stopped and stood there, as the others
continued to fumble on. CJ watched as it swayed there, seemingly contemplating
whether to pursue or not. It lifted its head, the remnants of a nose in the
air. It smelled something. His heart sunk as the zombie set its black eyes
directly on him.

It moaned.

Frozen in horror, CJ watched as the others
stopped in their pursuit of the buck and set there dead eyes on him. Like a
flock of birds, buzzards, they quickly changed their direction and began making
their way towards him. All seven of the undead were headed towards the house.

CJ snapped out of his fear and dropped to the
flat part of the roof he stood on. In a prone position, he trained the rifle on
the closest zombie’s head.

Time to wake up people.

He squeezed off the first round. The leader of
the pack’s head erupted in a splash of grey brain matter and rust colored blood
chunks. Showered in gore, the others didn’t stop coming. They moved as fast as
their rotten legs would carry them, not worried about the possibility of their
craniums meeting a similar fate.

“CJ!” His dad yelled from bedroom window. “What
are you doing-”

CJ fired the gun again, the recoil leaving a
stinging sensation in his right shoulder. The .30-06 was on the edge of what
most people would find comfortable of firing, but CJ had always been big for
his age, and the extra recoil didn’t bother him too much. It was nothing
compared to some of the hits he took on the line in football.

A second zombie’s brain met the same explosive
end as the first, the others still only concerned with tasting warm flesh.

Chris, on hearing the second gunshot, saw why
his son had ignored him. He flung open the window and scurried out onto the
roof.

“You ok?” he asked his son, who only
acknowledged him with a nod.

Chris stared in amazement at his son.

Where did this man come from?
He thought.

“Dad, I only have three more shots,” CJ said,
calmly, but with a hint of concern.

CJ fired his third shot as punctuation to his
statement. His aim was off on this one, and only clipped the shoulder of a
woman zombie. The shoulder ripped into pieces, the arm left dangling an
upsetting angle.

“I’ll get my gun,” Chris said, climbing back
into the window.

“STOP SHOOTING!”

Josh, Lexx, and Jeremy ran out into the front
yard. Josh held up his machete.

“No more noise!” He yelled.

CJ held the gun away from himself and nodded.

The three on the ground ran out to meet the
remaining undead. It was over in a couple of minutes. Heads lay removed from
their torsos or split in ways that the brain could no longer relay physical
actions to the body.

***

Once everyone cleaned up, the group as a whole
met in the living room. Not much had been said since his uncle, Jeremy, and
Lexx came back inside. His mother had pulled him back inside from the window
and hugged him tightly, the longest hug they’ve shared since they left home.
She softly cried as she held him and he let her hug him as long as she needed.

But now in the living room, she seemed back to
her distant self. She sat in the back of the room, at one on the chairs around
the dining table, unfocused on the meeting in front of her.

“So, what do we do now?”

His grandmother’s voice broke the silence.

“Today was a close one and we only have CJ to
thank for his quick actions this morning,” Josh said, looking directly at CJ.
“Thank you CJ.”

Everyone else, minus his mother, shared their
thanks. It felt strange for his family to be thanking him like that. CJ’s face
flushed red with embarrassment.

“That being said, we cannot, and should not,
rely on CJ to guard us every day.”

Strangely enough, as much as he liked watching
over his family, CJ felt himself relax at his uncle’s words. He was prepared to
do what was necessary in order to fight for his family, he had already proved
that, but he just was not ready for it. He was not ready to be the sole
protector of them. The little boy inside of him screamed that he wasn’t ready
to be a grown up yet. But somewhere else, somewhere deeper, he knew that he
didn’t have the option to be a kid anymore. The days of football and video games
were behind him.

“We have to finish the fence,” Josh continued.
“If we can get the fence up, we won’t have to worry about them getting in while
we’re sleeping. These things are attracted to sight, noise and smell. There’s
not much we can do about smell, but we can bring the other two to a minimum.
With the fence and plywood up around our outer perimeter, they won’t be able to
see inside and will be less likely to try and get in. As far as noise goes, we
only need to fire our weapons when absolutely necessary. Don’t worry CJ, this
morning was necessary.”

CJ nodded.

“He shouldn’t have been up there,” Anne said.

CJ looked at his grandmother, who seemed to
avoid his gaze. She had her eyes set on Chris.

“Maybe, Mom, but he was up there and it could
have been a lot worse if he hadn’t been,” Josh said, ignoring her tone.

She seemed dissatisfied with his answer, but
kept quiet.

“Regardless, we need to get a move on working on
the fence. I’ve already talked with Jeremy and we’re going to make a run out to
a nearby hardware store. They had lumber there, so we’ll try our luck with the
plywood. Everyone else should focus on getting the outside fence up to par and
ready for the plywood additions-”

“Oh!”

Everyone looked at Laura as her hand shot to her
belly.

“I felt the baby kick!” She said, her smile as
wide as her eyes.

Everyone in the family rushed to her side, as
Josh knelt down next to his wife and placed his hands on her stomach. His eyes
watered as he felt movement from his unborn child stirring.

CJ smiled with the rest of his family, but his
eyes wandered over to Tori, who watched with a look of concern on her face. She
noticed him looking at her. She did her best to force a smile, but it quickly
faded away.

Jeremy and Josh pulled up in front of the
hardware store. It looked abandoned. The windows were dark and no movement
could be seen from inside. As he stepped out of the truck, his memory flashed
back to Savannah and to the hardware store there. He and Ben were able to find
tools to use as weapons there after an unsuccessful trip to Wal-Mart. They also
found the owners of the store slumped over in the back room, with bullet holes
in their foreheads and guns still gripped in their dead fingers. He worried
that he might see something familiar in this store.

“You think it’ll be empty?” He asked.

“We’ll see,” Josh answered.

The two men entered the store, a bell ringing as
they did. They both winced at the sound alerting their presence. After a few
tense seconds of silence, Josh shrugged and motioned that they move into the
store. Like their trip before, they brought the one gun and their respective
bladed weapons. This time instead of looking for something to defend himself
with, Jeremy was looking for something to build defenses. The tools gathered
the other day were mostly damaged from the rain, so they would need to find what
they could to replace them. A good working saw was on the top of the list.

They split up to cover more ground. Most of the
shelves were barren, already looted by others.

Wish I had a buggy,
Jeremy thought to
himself.

He grabbed what he could in his arms: a power
saw, a few boxes of nails, and a hammer. He went back towards the front of the
store and placed his finds down on the counter.

Do you guys take credit cards?

He grinned at his own joke.

Josh returned with a large air tank on wheels.

“What are we gonna use that thing for?” Jeremy
asked.

“I saw an air nail-gun back there. It’ll be
quicker than that hammer and nails you got there,” he said, motioning to
Jeremy’s loot.

“Hey now, don’t be hatin’ on my hammer and
nails.”

“I’m not,” Josh said. “It’ll just be quicker.”

Josh did not try to hide the urgency in his
voice.

“You okay?” Jeremy asked.

Josh stopped and looked out the window.

“Yeah, I guess. I just… Feeling the baby move
made things so much real.”

He turned back to look at Jeremy, a smile
beginning to form on his face.

“I’m gonna be a daddy soon.”

Jeremy nodded and gave Josh a slap on the back.

“Yeah you are!”

“Thanks.”

“For what?” Jeremy said.

“I don’t know, being cool about the baby I
guess. I’ve seen the way Tori looks at me every time it gets brought up. She
doesn’t seem too thrilled about the idea of their being a newborn around.”

“Hey,” Jeremy started. “You didn’t plan on
having a baby during the zombie apocalypse did you?”

Josh shook his head.

“No, no I didn’t.”

“Okay then, don’t worry about it! Not much you
can do about it now. And don’t worry about Tori, she can just be that way
sometimes. Most likely she’s just worried like you are, she just has a funny
way of showing it. You gotta admit, a baby in this world is gonna be hard.”

“Yeah, I know it is; that’s what got me so
worried. I’ve known guys who went crazy with the weight of being a father
before the dead started walking around. Now, on top of taking care of my wife
and child, I have to fight off the dead from devouring them? To be honest, I
haven’t really been terrified until now. I’ve been scared, don’t get me wrong,
but right now I am absolutely afraid of what comes next.”

Jeremy tried to think of something to say that
would be comforting, but nothing would come to mind. Josh was right. The idea
of having a family right now was terrifying. Jeremy had not really thought
about it until now. If his mom were still alive, where would he be right now?
They most likely would have stayed at the house, with his rusty machete being
the only line of defense. He would have never met Ben, or Tori and Lexx. He
would have never met the Padre. Or Josh and his family. If his mother were
still alive, how would he have protected her?

Guilt began to creep up within him as he
remembered that he didn’t protect her. He stood and watched as the dead pulled
her apart on their driveway. He froze in fear then, how would he have reacted
any different later?

No. There was nothing I could have done.

He knew it was true and the events that came to
pass were the only way they would have played out. He could not keep dwelling
on “what-if”. His mother’s death, as painful as it was, it was what drove him
to find his father. And in that process, he met good people. People who are now
like family to him. He would hate to see something happen to Tori and Lexx.
Even Josh and his family. While they weren’t blood-related, they were all alive
and that meant that they were all in the same boat.

“What comes next,” Jeremy finally spoke, “is we
survive. Together.”

Josh nodded. His smile returned to his somewhat
pale face.

“Your family is my family now, and I’ll be
damned if I see anything happen to them.”

“Thank you,” Josh said.

Jeremy flashed a smile.

“Now let’s go find more stuff.”

***

After gathering the tools into the truck, they
pulled it around into the lumberyard. It was not impressive by any means, but
for the most part, it looked untouched. Apparently, no one was planning such a
large property renovation as they were.

“Plywood’s over there,” Jeremy said, pointing
towards the back of the yard.

Josh parked the truck next to the rack full of plywood.

“I don’t see a forklift anywhere, so it looks
like we gotta load it by hand,” Josh said.

“Oh, joy…” Jeremy whined.

They loaded up as much of the wood as they could
into the bed of the truck, relocating some of the tools into the cab.

“We’ll have to make a second trip,” Josh said,
as he tightened down the straps on the truck.

“Yeah, hopefully it will all still be here when
we get back,” Jeremy responded.

“I think it will. It’s been here this long.”

Once the wood was secure, they pulled back out
into the street. It had been eerily quiet the entire time they had been in the
small town. No movement anywhere, the town was dead.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeremy saw
something move.

His head turned quickly.

“There’s someone out there,” Jeremy said.

Josh slowed down the truck as Jeremy shifted in
his seat to get a better look.

“And I don’t think they’re dead.”

Josh stopped the truck.

Jeremy was right. The man and woman didn’t look
dead. Rough, but still alive. They both wore ragged looking clothing. The man
in a stained white t-shirt and jean cut-off shorts. The woman wore a
loose-fitting sundress, its print as faded as her skin. They were both
skeletons, barely any meat left on their bones. Perhaps the zombies didn’t
think they’d be worth the effort.

They took notice of the truck and held their
hands up, trying to wave it down.

“What do we do?”

Josh looked at Jeremy. His jaw seemed set and he
shrugged.

“Follow my lead.”

They got out of the truck just as the two
strangers reached them.

“Hey there friend!” The man said.

Josh motioned that he keep his voice down.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, his voice obnoxiously
above a whisper. “It’s just that we haven’t seen people in a while. Living
people, ain’t that right Virginia?”

“Nope. Haven’t seen anybody,” Virginia quipped.

Now that the pair was closer, Jeremy could not
help but notice how much older they looked. Their skin was wrinkled and small
sores covered their visible flesh. And they smelled like they haven’t bathed in
a long time. A mix of musk and cigarette smoke floated around them.

“How long have y’all been out here?” Josh asked.

“Oh, just about since everything started I
reckon. We’ve been moving around place to place, trying to avoid the monsters.”

“Have you had to kill any?”

The man looked hesitantly at the woman.

“One,” she said, her eyes down.

“Just one?” Josh pressed.

The man nodded.

“We mostly try to avoid them. But this one
stumbled in while we was getting high. Tried to grab Virginia, so I smashed his
head in.”

Jeremy watched as Josh squirmed at the word “high”.
Virginia nudged the man in the ribs.

“Speaking of getting high,” he said, “y’all
wouldn’t happen to have any crystal on ya, would ya?”

Josh slowly shook his head.

“Sorry, but no,” Josh said.

“Ah, that’s too bad. We ran out a couple days
ago. We’ve been needing to party real bad since then.”

“Yeah, party,” Virginia added.

Jeremy felt the air get tense. He wasn’t sure if
it was just him, or maybe everybody felt it. The two druggies looked at Jeremy
and Josh like they were hiding something. He could feel Virginia looking him up
and down.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have any drugs… What
was your name again?” Josh asked.

“Dennis.”

“Well Dennis, it was nice to meet you.
Virginia,” Josh said, nodding his head towards them and turning to leave.

“Wait,” Dennis said, grabbing Josh by the arm.

Jeremy’s fingers touched the hilt of his
machete.

Josh slowly turned to look at the man.

“Y’all don’t have anything? Anything would help.
Some coke, whisky, hell, I’d even smoke a little grass to take the edge off.”

“I said we don’t have any drugs.”

“Virginia will suck your dick for anything.”

She started to hesitate Dennis’s offer, but the
need for relief overcame the small amount of pride left in her. She simply
nodded.

“No, thank you,” Josh said, his voice growing
agitated with the two junkies.

“C’mon man, we both will,” Dennis pushed.

Josh grabbed the man’s hand from his arm, his
grip crumbling in the grasp of a stronger hand. He flung the hand away from
him, Dennis looking hurt.

“C’mon man, help us out here. We’re hurting real
bad.”

“We don’t have anything to give you.”

Dennis started looking around. Jeremy’s hand
slid closer to his blade’s handle.

“Well, shit then,” Dennis said. “You can at
least take us to where you’re staying.”

Jeremy flashed his eyes at Josh.

“No, I’m afraid we can’t do that either.”

Josh turned and began walking towards the truck.
He motioned that Jeremy follow.

“Fuck you man!”

Josh stopped.

“Yeah, fuck you!” Virginia chimed in, her voice
shrill and cracked from excessive smoking.

“You just gonna leave us here asshole? That
ain’t very Christian!” Dennis chided.

Josh spun around to face them.

“And neither is offering up your friend like
that,” he said.

Dennis was startled by Josh’s response, not
expecting one.

“You’re an asshole. Fucking leaving us out here
to fucking die.”

“Let’s go Josh.”

Jeremy’s voice pulled Josh back. He felt his
anger twitch within him, but a calmness washed over him.

“Goodbye Dennis. Goodbye Virginia. Best of luck
to you two.”

With that, Josh climbed back into the truck and
cranked the engine. They drove off leaving the two junkies slowly shrinking in
the rear-view mirror.

***

“You okay?”

Josh focused through the cloud of thought to
hear Jeremy’s question.

“Yeah.”

“Hey man, you did the right thing,” Jeremy said.
“There’s no way we could have brought those meth heads back to the cabin.”

Josh nodded.

“Hey,” Jeremy said louder.

Josh looked over to his friend.

“You did the right thing, okay? You are gonna be
great at protecting your wife and little one.”

“Thanks Jer.”

“Do y’all know if it’s gonna be a boy or girl?”
Jeremy asked, trying to bring the conversation back to normal.

Josh laughed.

“No, we don’t. We just assume it’ll be a girl.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see like the good ol’ days.”

“Good. It’ll give us all something to look forward
to,” Jeremy said, as the two made their way back to the house.