Day 56

I get shaken awake by Archer, jolting me into consciousness. Even though I hadn’t made a sound, his urgent shushing sent a chill down my spine. It’s a bad sign if he’s telling me to stay quiet as soon as I’m up. I look around in the darkness. The unfamiliarity of the forest we’ve had to camp in for the past week still feels unsettling. Then I hear a loud CRACK echoing through the silent night. I grab a flashlight and turn it towards the sound, getting up into a crouch. The human shape comes limping through, and thankfully, the creature hasn’t seen us yet in the brush that lies around us. The lifeless body going through the woods only feels the terrible hunger that they all must feel. The Zombie Apologist was only supposed to stay in the movies and books. But, when the outbreak started just about two months ago, it only took a week for the world to collapse into chaos, causing everyone to fend for themselves. Except for Archer and I, we were together playing games as usual at my house when it first started, and we have stayed together since. The Zombie walks on, and we finally deem it safe enough to start packing. It’s never just one Zombie walking alone. It always starts with one and leads to a whole pack of them, going nowhere but to find anything that moves so they can eat. Once we finish packing our stuff, we carefully leave our small brush hut, making no noise to not attract it, and start heading into town.

The walk is eerily quiet, with none of the usual bird or insect noises that we’ve come to learn since getting here. Archer breaks the silence, his voice barely above a whisper, “You think it’s a bad sign? All the birds leaving for the forest right before a hoard passes through?” I shone the flashlight around the woods, and even the trees seemed to still not want to make noises to attract unwanted attention. “I don’t know… maybe? We’ve never been out of our hut this late. It could always be like this,” I mumbled, not believing it myself but trying to calm both of our nerves. Archer nods, his eyes reflecting the same fear gnawing at my insides. I can tell he’s not comforted either.

Once we make the thirty-minute walk into the small town, we go into a half-collapsed building where we set up a second base. We get to the back of the store, and thankfully, the small setup we made here hasn’t been touched. We sit down on the blankets. Our plan today was to come into town anyway to find anything that could be useful to us. Since we’ve been running low on almost everything during the week we’ve been camping. The town hasn’t been the safest place since the outbreak, especially when the other humans will kill for what the other might have. We rest until the sun starts coming up. Archer gets up and stretches. “Come on, we should start looking around,” I force myself up with a yawn, nodding as we take our stuff heading out the back of the store.

We creep into an old convenience store that we haven’t looted yet. The shelves were bare, but a few snacks were scattered here and there. “Hey Mateo, come look at this,” I hear Archers whisper-yell from across the store. I head over and see what he’s after, and excitement goes through me. A bunch of medicines and supplies were locked behind a scratched-up glass case that no one had successfully gotten into. “Maybe there’s a key hanging up somewhere,” I say. “If there was, someone would have already gotten into the case.” I open my mouth to argue but shut it, knowing he’s right. Still, it doesn’t stop me from looking behind the counter and heading into the office, where no keys are to be seen. I found a few bobby pins in a drawer. I go back to Archer, showing the pins to him. “You think you’d be able to pick it?” He studies the pins, taking them from me. “I can try, but I won’t promise anything.” I only shrug. “It’s worth a shot.” I watch as he bends a couple pins and starts working on the lock. I walk away, seeing if I can find anything. I looked through all the shelves, but I still found nothing. I check, looking through the dusty window out onto the streets, and I freeze. The Zombies are filing through, and there is way more than usual. The hoard must have changed directions and headed into the town, and it was bigger than we thought. I’m about to call Archer when I hear a loud, welling noise and hurry over to Archer. The cabinet is open, but the alarm system is going off. Archer is already raking everything into his bag.

I rush over and start doing the same. The Zombies come closer and start banging on the window and doors, trying to get in. We throw our bags over our shoulders and head to the back to escape out of the emergency exit. Archer pushes open the door, but it only opens a crack before it stops something blocking the door from the other side. Archer curses, and then we both look at each other, the glass crashing in the front telling us the zombies have just broken into the building. I get beside Archer, and we both push on the door, hearing the zombies getting close. I look around the office to find something to move whatever is behind the door. I spot a cane. I hurry over to it, take it, and then put it through the crack in the door, pushing a board that seemed to be lying against the door, getting stuck on the handle. We could finally make the door wide enough to get through as the zombies crept into the back room. Hearing the noise from the door, Archer held the door as I threw our bags out first, then started slipping through. Suddenly, I feel something grab my ankle, accidentally letting out a yell. Looking down, I see a rotting hand holding me towards its mouth. The zombies in the room start hurrying towards us. I try kicking the thing off, but I am stuck between the door and the creature that has my ankle.

Archer pulls out his gun, handing it to me. I grab for it, shooting the beast below me, and finally slip out. I turn back to see Archer get tackled by a Zombie. The door starts to close, and time seems to slow as I see my best friend fighting to keep it off him. I look towards the alley where I could run free to see another day, but looking back to the door, I grab it, opening and shooting the one on top of him. Going in again, I grab his hand and start pulling him out from under the limp, rotting fresh. “Just go run, Mateo, we can’t both leave,” but I begin shooting the ones closest to us, giving us a few more seconds as he finally gets out from under it, but it’s too late. The gun shoots its last bullet as they continue swarming, and now, neither of us can make it out.