Baby and I turned and faced the few stragglers that were milling on the lawn, who were now aware of our presence. One was a child zombie, I hated the children. It was a little boy, at least I thought it was, since most of his flesh was missing from his face and his clothes were dirty and blood stained. I slipped the tactical tomahawk I was now using as my go-to zombie killer out of the loop on my belt and slipped off the cover.
Baby’s shoulder brushed mine as we moved as one toward the approaching zombies. I went for the kid first–pull back, swing, chop, repeat. The sharp blade penetrated the soft skull easily and the kiddie-Z fell to the ground. I was on the next one before its body hit the ground. This one was taller so it was a little hard to get a good skull breaking chop in, so I kicked first taking out its kneecap to bring it down to my level. It took two more front kicks to finally break its forward momentum. His skull was split seconds after and I moved on to the next one.
Kill. Fucking. Zombies.
As the last one fell to Baby’s deadly hand, the boys had the fort secured and were looking disappointed that they had missed the fun.
“Now that we got them in there, what do we do with them?” Romeo asked.
“Fuck if I know,” was my reply. “But, damn, that was crazy.”
I felt alive, I felt in control. Zach had done me a favor by sending me out on this run.
It still hurt like shit that Blake left, but I didn’t have the luxury to let it affect me. This wasn’t a world for tears. This wasn’t a world for love. This was a world where the only thing you could do was fight and I liked a good fight.
ONE
Grocery Shopping in a Post-Z World
My new machete went into the dead guy’s head with a sickening crunch. I pulled the sucker out and it made an even more gag-inducing sound, almost like a burp. I had honed my blade to a razor’s sharpness so it could slice and dice and withdraw easily from the flesh of the dead. It made one hell of a good zombie killer. The reach was nice and long so I could give it a good swing and not risk a bite. I was trying to use my machete when I had more room to move and my tomahawk when quarters were tight. I was getting a good system down. I really liked the machete, though.
The blade was the perfect length for decapitation, but for a quick kill, a good brain skewering was the key. Decapitation would slow them down, but a knife in the brain would take them out for the count.
A good zombie was a dead zombie.
I loved my machete. I had named her Elsa.
Six months since Z-Day, six months of hell, six months since the world went to shit, six months where every day I woke up and lived a day I didn’t expect to live.
I would not be alive if it weren’t for our group, my new family, the survivors that lived on S-Island. Together we survived. At the compound, we were almost thriving. Yes, we could have more food and a few less nightmares, but overall we were better than the rest of humanity. This wasn’t saying much though, since the rest of humanity was dead and wanted to eat my flesh.
“Alexis, watch out!” Zach cried and I turned around just in time to take out a big motherfucker, dressed in nothing but a pair of pajama pants and bunny slippers, black as night, covered in gore, and in the most ridiculous pair of pjs I had ever seen.
Were those fairies?
If he wasn’t trying to eat my face, I might have cracked a smile. But it was a Z-eat-Z world and he wanted to eat my ass. Even though I appreciated the humor of his attire, he was better off dead, the final kind of dead. I had to reach up to embed my blade in his head and then jump out of the way quickly when he fell like a tree onto the pavement, taking my machete with him.
When I pulled my machete from underneath him, I realized his weight had bent it. I almost shed a tear as I surveyed the damage to my blade.
It was a metaphorical tear, but those counted, right?
I loved Elsa. Much better crying over a weapon than some undeserving deserter. Nope, not going there.
“He bent my machete, the douche bag!” I said, pissed. I kicked the dead body, my steel-toed combat boot making a satisfying thud on his dead flesh. “My fucking machete!”
A strong arm draped over my shoulder and the smell of Zach filled my nostrils. In the last couple of months he had become my rock–
well, maybe my pebble
. Ever since…well, since the Asshole abandoned us. I thought I couldn’t get any lower after that particular string of events, but Zach managed to pull me out of it mostly because he acted like he was my personal drill instructor hell bent on getting my ass in gear and in shape. He forced me to pull my own weight in the compound and learn how to protect myself. The compound work was cathartic and exactly what I needed. The physical part of it kept me focused and my adrenaline pumping. When you had nothing to do but kill zombies and hone your body, sleep was easy and silly boys were the furthest thing from a girl’s mind.
Ok, maybe not the furthest thing
, if I was being honest, Blake, the Asshole was always at the back of my mind, like an ache that wouldn’t go away.
But now there were a lot of other things on my mind, like killing these zombies and getting some more food for the island.
“Chill, Lex, you’re gonna bring the rest of the neighborhood calling.” He plucked the machete out of my hands, dropped it on the ground, and stomped on it a few times. He bent down to retrieve it, then brought it up and brandished its now only slightly misaligned length. He did so with a big smile and I couldn’t help but smile back.
“See, good as new,” he grinned.
“I wouldn’t say that, but it’ll do.” I took the blade back and turned around to face the next challenge. The Quickie Shop Mart.
We were currently in pursuit of food and supplies. Zach, Romeo and I were running recon on a corner store that we hadn’t hit yet. Besides Zach, Romeo was one of my favorites as far as other survivors.
Stoic and quiet, he was a machine. His actions and words were only used when needed. Most of the others stayed away from him.
They couldn’t take his wall and unresponsiveness, but I wasn’t afraid of Romeo. There was a reason they called him Romeo, pre-Z of course. According to the other grunts, Romeo had been a consummate flirt, able to bag and tag anything of the female persuasion. Panties would drop upon him entering the room or so I was told by Marquez. He was a fine piece of man, if I had to judge, and I could see it, but Romeo, in a post-Z world, was no Romeo. I barely saw him crack a smile, much less flirt. He was a focused zombie killing machine. He got the job done and done well.
In this world, we needed a focused Romeo, not flirty Romeo. I liked this Romeo.
I worried about him though, I couldn’t help it. Henry Kirk, another grunt in the MJ Security Army, from the firm Blake and Zach owned pre-Z, said Romeo had a little sister that was under his charge. She didn’t make it to the compound. Romeo didn’t talk about it and we didn’t pry. Everyone had a story.
Everyone
.
No one made it into this post-Z world unscathed.
The guilt of my own parents’ death still ate at my soul. About two months after making it to S-Island, I worked up the nerve to go back into the city. My parents’ home was located in the Upper Ninth Ward, an area outside of the French Quarter, which was supposedly ground zero.
It was too little, too late. I found my parents dead in their home. There was no telling how it all went down, but from the looks of their neighborhood it happened quickly. Their cars were still in the driveway, everything was in its place. There weren’t any signs of a panicked group of people. No one was fleeing an apocalypse.
My parents were there, dead. My mother was the worse off of the two, eaten. I assumed Dad had come in with the infection and then feasted on her. Even though I had psyched myself up to do it, Romeo pushed me aside and took care of the matter and that was one of the other reasons he was a favorite of mine. After dispatching them quickly, he just turned to me and nodded. Job done, time to go.
“Alexis, you’re miles away, what’s up with you today?” Romeo’s sudden presence next to me had me sucking in a quick breath.
“This neighborhood brings back memories,” I lied. I wasn’t on point today, but I wasn’t admitting it. We were deep in the East, a neighborhood of New Orleans called simply, New Orleans East. It was a large area, but the one we were in was an area that I had frequented a lot as a teen, so technically I wasn’t being that untruthful. There had been a great seafood restaurant on the corner and my buddy from high school had lived about two blocks down.
I wonder what happened to her?
“Yeah, memories,” he sighed. “C’mon, I think we got all of ‘em. What do you want me to prioritize and stock?” Romeo asked me and Zach.
“You hit the pharmacy. We need everything and anything. Go for pills, not liquids, unless you find the unmixed. Stockpile any over-the-counter stuff you can find. Grab boxes from the back and just fill them up. Zach and I will scrounge through any canned goods or non-perishables we can find, but I’m not that hopeful. They kept the pharmacy locked though, so that should be intact. Your skills should get you in.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I hated when he called me ma’am, but with Zach the one in charge from the onset, my friendship with him had led to a sort of co-dictatorship. The grunts needed a clearly defined chain of command. Zach was on top and my association with him made me sort of up there with him. I was also pretty bossy. Zach said I was an asshole for thinking that way, that it was because I made sound decisions and the boys trusted me, but I knew it was just because he always deferred to me, the wimp.
Deep down I knew it wasn’t just because of my “sound decisions” that Zach kept me near him.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the way Zach looked at me wasn’t because we were apocalypse BFFs. He wanted to be apocalypse fuck buddies or maybe even a bit more. I just wasn’t willing to play that game, especially since the last guy I had shacked up with was his best friend and had left the both of us high and dry
to rescue his ex-wife
. At this point in my existence, I wasn’t willing to go all-in with anyone, except a well-honed machete.
I wasn’t even sure I was over Blake, which set off all kinds of alarm bells in my gut. I felt like such an asshat for pining over the douche, but it couldn’t be helped. I blamed hormones and my traitorous vagina.
At night, I still woke up and reached for him heady with need. That was all sorts of fucked up in my book.
I had to shake off my wandering mind. Too much introspection got you dead in this world. I needed to be mentally all-hands-on-deck.
What the fuck was wrong with me today?
Time to get moving, no thinking of men. I pushed into the store and gagged from the smell. Vomit rose in my throat and I had to spit to get the acidic bile out of my mouth. You would think that I would be used to this shit by now. But the smell of rotten meat, spoiled veggies, and some other noxious gas permeated the entire store and sent my gut into a frenzy. It was horrible.
Zach didn’t say a thing about my almost vomit. He just handed me a towel and a bottle of water. I nodded my thanks and wiped my face, swirling the water in my mouth and spitting it on the floor. He pushed a shopping cart in my direction.
“Get to work.”
“Aye, aye.”
“I think you should salute me next time,” he winked.
“Never!”
“Your defiance to my leadership is so sexy.” I shook my head at his response and bit back the caustic comment that was on the tip of my tongue. I pushed my cart to the right side of the store and waved him toward the other side for maximum coverage.
The pickings were slim, but I did manage a semi-good score. I found some vitamin drinks and meal replacement bars and shakes. I even found a small supply of canned goods on the back shelf to the rear of the store, canned peaches, fuck the world.
Zach’s basket wasn’t as full as mine when we met at the back. He had a few bags of rice, a lot of pasta, and some mouth-watering tubs of icing. I was calling dibs on that sweet goodness.
“Let’s check the storerooms and then hopefully Romeo will be done and we can get back to the Island,” Zach said. I nodded in agreement and followed him through the swinging doors that led to the back, my machete drawn and ready.
There were boxes everywhere and they looked to still be sealed, not even unpacked. We had to grab two more baskets to fill up on what we found in those boxes, boxes of canned goods, peas, and corn galore. I nearly squealed in delight when we opened up a box of Ramen Noodles and another of boxed Jambalaya mix. I had dreams of catching some shrimp and cooking up a feast.
There was more storage a little further back through a doorway that looked promising. In front of the door was a heavy pole that I picked up and tested the weight. I could do some serious damage with this,
but how could I utilize it?
I set it down, and promised myself that I would come back for it right after I checked this room out. I pushed through the door and knew I had made a huge mistake the moment I set foot over the threshold. The stink of zombie hit me first and then a body slammed into me. I brought my arm up to block any bites. My arm
was covered in a homemade body armor that I had perfected, a light weight plastic material of rubber scrounged from used tires adhered with duct tape.
My arm couldn’t keep it off of me for long, especially when another body slammed into the first zombie and tried to reach me over the first one’s shoulder. It was fighting with the zombie on top of me to get to my neck. I couldn’t remember if I had signaled to Zach where I was going. He probably didn’t even know I was being attacked. I had lost my machete and couldn’t reach the M9 strapped to my waist. I was screwed.
“Zach!” I screamed.