Tonight The World Dies Read online

  “You’ll never guess what just happened!” She said, bouncing up and down where she stood.

  “You got into Stanford? ‘Cause that’s something no one would guess.” I said.

  She stopped bouncing. “Number one, that hurt. Number two, I just found three dollars in quarters!”

  “…And?” I raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I’m now three dollars closer to being a millionaire?” She turned the statement into a question, attitude creeping into her voice.

  I just laughed and shook my head.

  We rolled into town at dusk. There had been a few shamblers and crawlers milling about, but they didn’t notice us. We stopped at a sporting goods store first, loading up on bats, rackets, and anything else that looked like it could be useful. The only grocery store in town was packed full of the undead, so we decided to skip it and try the next town for food. Finally we entered Lowe’s, clearing the aisles quickly before buckling down and searching for tools. We loaded wooden stakes, battery powered air compressors, and metal pipes into the RV first, then focused on nails, hammers, and power tools. I had found a nice nail gun that could send a nail through the soft skull of a zombie like a hot knife through butter. Or like a sharp nail through a soft zombie skull. We had loaded all the hardware we could fit into the storage areas of the RV before going back in one last time to look for food by the cash registers. The food racks and refrigerators were unfortunately empty, so we turned to leave when the unthinkable happened.

  We were surrounded.

  Chapter Two

  Have you ever run down the Lowe’s light fixture aisle, being chased by an angry zombie? If the answer is yes, you’ll know exactly how I felt. If the answer is no, I don’t recommend it.

  We had managed to shoot our way through the crowed and were now running flat out down the aisles. I grabbed a couple axes off the floor, handing one off to whoever was running next to me. I wasn’t really paying attention to that particular detail at the moment. I knew that eventually, we’d run out of ammo and have to resort to using melee weapons, but I prayed it wouldn’t come to that until the last one or three zombies, preferably crawlers. I looked around me again. There was no way of knowing just how many there were, or if we had enough bullets. A couple of zombies were right behind us, gaining speed. Those freaks were actually running! One moaned loudly, its jaw unhinging, and three more zombies appeared ahead of us. Did he just…? Did they…? No, it couldn’t be possible, could it? Where they actually thinking? Zombies can not think! That was the number one, undisputed rule about them that everyone, everywhere knew without a doubt! So why did it seem like they were using strategies against us? How the bloody hell was this happening?

  More zombies were coming at us from every angle, surrounding us once again. The one with the unhinged jaw moaned again and his fellows stopped. They stared at us, their cold, hungry eyes peering unblinkingly at our small group, far enough away to be completely out of swinging range, but still an easy shot with our pistols.

  “What are they doing?” Sully said, confusion and fear coloring his voice.

  “They can think.” I whispered.

  “Huh?” Billie said.

  “What?” Dean asked.

  “They can think. These are not the average undead lowlifes. They can freaking think.” I whispered again, my voice hoarse.

  “You are completely out of your mind!” Dean hissed.

  “Duly noted.” I said.

  The apparent leader scowled at me as best as a zombie can scowl. Frack. They could think and understand us. We are in deep shit people.

  “Please.” I said. “Please, let us leave in peace, and we won’t kill any of you.”

  It seemed to consider my offer for a moment and then shook its head. He nodded once and four of his flunkies shambled toward us, their arms outstretched. There were just too many to risk using all our ammo right away.

  “Save your bullets if you can. We don’t know how many of them there are” I whispered, lifting my axe, ready to chop off the head of the zombie coming straight at me. I guess it was time to thin the herd a bit without our guns.

  A flash of movement and the four zombies lay dead on the floor. Totally dead. We may joke around a lot, but my guys are damn good at killing things. The horde rushed us, trying to run forward on broken, boney legs.

  “This way!” I yelled, pulling them further into the store, cutting down everything in our path.

  We dodged around the freaks, occasionally stopping long enough to remove a head from a wayward zombie. I ran down the aisles, leading everyone to the back of the store. When I was sure that the entire horde was behind us, I changed directions, sprinting toward the front door; my friends followed suit, confused.

  “What are we…” Sully began.

  “Don’t talk. Just run.” I panted, pushing myself harder. We had to make it out in time.

  I could hear the zombies behind us, running to catch up. We were a full two hundred yards ahead of them, but if we slowed down at all they would be on top of us again. We raced to the parking lot and threw ourselves into the RV, slamming the door behind us.

  “Somebody, get us the hell out of here, now!” I heaved.

  Sully crawled, still panting, into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine roared and we sped out, desperate to put as much distance between us and that store as we could. The building grew smaller and smaller as we tore down the streets of what was probably once a quiet little town in the middle of nowhere. Most towns are quiet now, I suppose, but every single one is now overrun by the living dead. I tried to relax after that close call, but my mind kept returning to the same idea, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. They could think and understand. They could communicate with each other. This wasn’t just killing reanimated bodies anymore. The freshly dead always acted out some semblance of their former lives when trying to get food: going to the store, turning a doorknob in a house, smashing a rock against a window. These things, although frightening in every possible way, were normal and generally to be ignored. It was like muscle memory. Sure, they may look like they could think and use reasoning skills, but they weren’t people anymore. But then there were the zombies in that store, communicating with each other, using tactics against us, the one even understood what I had said! I struggled with the idea, the notion that they may still be alive in some way; that they were intelligent beings capable of thought and possibly feeling. Could they feel the slice of the axe, the sting of the bat as we cracked it against their skull? Did they fear us as we pointed a gun at their head and fired? Tears streamed down my eyes; a sob caught in my throat. Was everything we had ever thought about the zombies and their condition wrong? Maybe the years and years of Hollywood’s influence had led us astray. People get sick and try to eat other people, their bodies decompose while they continue to walk around, and we think they are zombies. When the zombie apocalypse happens, you shoot them in the head, or you sever their upper spinal cord. That’s how you kill them; that’s how you stay alive. But then, that’s how you kill living, breathing, feeling people too. Maybe they weren’t zombies after all. And even if they were, how were we to know what it truly meant to be a zombie? I rolled over and cried into the floor.

  “Jo?” Billie asked, crawling next to me, her hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  “They’re still human. They can think and reason.” I sobbed. “I’ve been killing people!”

  She tilted her head to the side. “What are you talking about? The zombies? They can’t think.”

  “Jo, chill. They’re zombies. Don’t you remember The Walking Dead? When they come back, they aren’t themselves. They aren’t human anymore.”

  I stopped crying and narrowed my eyes at him. “That was TV. This is real life. Why don’t we string you up on a flagpole and see how long it takes for them to figure out how to get you down. Besides, if you actually remember that show, you’d recall that even those zombies showed some ability to effing think.”

&nbs
p; He looked at me, shocked. I didn’t normally speak to them like that. Not with that much attitude. It didn’t matter to me anymore. He didn’t understand, none of them did. They were human. Or at least, very close to human. I finally understood what my dad went through in the military, why he wouldn’t talk about it, and why he always sought solace in nature- it was the only place he could be without fear of being judged, where he could forget the horror of knowing he took the life of another, of a lot of others.

  “Dean, take the wheel,” Sully called from the front.

  Dean walked off, shaking his head at me. They traded places smoothly, the RV barely slowing down. Sully took out his gun, checked that the safety was on, and placed it on the passenger seat. He approached me slowly, kneeling down next to Billie.

  “Can you give us a minute?” he asked her.

  “Sure,” She said, and went to join her brother.

  He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. He just rubbed his hand back and forth down my arm, letting me lean my head against him.

  “I’m ok,” I finally whispered. My eyes were dry now, but I didn’t really trust my voice.

  “You’re not ok, and you never will be, but I love you anyway.” He said.

  Tears streamed from my eyes again and I buried my face in his chest, my arms wrapped firmly around his middle. He held me close, one strong hand on my back, the other softly petting my long mane of burgundy hair. After a while, I looked up at him, my eyes red and puffy, but still mostly dry. “So it took the end of the world to actually provoke an emotional response from you that wasn’t anger.” He teased.

  I pulled away, shoving him playfully, a smile pulling at the corners of my lips. “Jerk.”

  I used to think of him as a brother, a friend. But now, I don’t know. Maybe it was the fact that we might be some of the last people on earth talking, but now it was different, like I had felt this undeniable love for him all this time and just never noticed. Or maybe it was my emotional state and his kindness messing with my head. Who’s to know? Bracing myself against him, I rose slowly to my feet. I had to distract myself before I started making out with him. Ugg. It was like I was back in high school again, fawning over some guy just because he was nice to me. Except this wasn’t just some guy. This was Sully.

  Thinking back to that group, the one who had been documenting everything, I recalled the way the youngest girl sat in easy silence. Her name was Kat, and she was gorgeous enough to be a model. Her long red-blond hair, more red than blond, hung loose around her shoulders; a crocheted cap sat delicately on the back of her head. I remembered the way she smelled, like charcoal and grass. A sketch pad rested atop her jean-clad lap, hiding a few of the rips and holes. She had been sketching Dean, oblivious to the murmurs of the rest of her group.

  I slid down to sit next to her, matching her silence. After a while, I spoke up.

  “Why do you do it?”

  “Hmm?” She didn’t look at me, instead keeping her eyes on her drawing.

  “Why do you write everything down? Why do you draw so many people?”

  “I want to remember them,” She said. Her voice was light- fairy like, but still full of a hidden personality.

  “Why would you want to do that?” I said, thinking of all the people I was glad to forget.

  “Everyone deserves to be remembered, even if they come back as one of them.”

  She was right.

  Back in the present, I poked through the cupboards, focusing my full attention on each can and box before me. Anything to take my mind off of where it should not, under any circumstances, go, right? Three cupboards later, I found the one thing I had been craving for the last six months: chocolate cookies! I drooled just looking at them. Their dense, chewy texture and chocolaty overloaded flavor rolled across my tongue, courtesy of my imagination. They were probably long since expired, but I didn’t care. They were chocolate, and they were cookies. That’s all that mattered to me, and that’s all that counted to the others.

  “Oh children, look what I found!” I called, dangling the bag in front of me.

  “Cookies!” They yelled.

  Dean pulled the RV to a squealing stop, everyone lurching forward with the force. At least we knew the breaks were good. When we were safely in park, I was under siege from three pairs of grabbing hands, each more desperate than the last for the first taste of delicious chocolaty junk food.

  “Calm down!” I said.

  “Stop hogging the damned cookies!” Billie said, snatching at them and missing, latching onto my boob instead.

  “Ok, enough!” I shouted, crouching down and crawling away from them, elbows striking their legs randomly. “If you would give me two freaking seconds, I could open the bag and we can have one each.”

  They glared at me mutinously, hungry and angry, each of them probably planning a hundred different ways to kill me in my sleep.

  “If we each have one, only one, right now, they can last longer. We could have another cookie with dinner, and another with breakfast.” I pulled myself onto the bench seat next to the table, trying to protect myself.

  I could see Sully relenting, and the cracked, rusty cogs turning in Billie’s and Dean’s heads as they worked it out.

  “Fine.” They said together.

  I opened the bag, relishing in the stale scent. All three of them kneeled at my feet, sniffing at the bag. I felt like their mother, handing them a small snack to calm them down before dinner.

  “We have to keep moving.” I told Dean, who promptly walked back to the driver’s seat.

  We rocked forward, the speed demon at the wheel again. Pulling my battered old deck of playing cards from my clothing bag, I whistled at Sully.

  “I want to play a game.” I said in my best ‘Jigsaw’ voice. He raised an eyebrow at me. “Black Jack.”

  “The stakes?” He asked.

  “Winner gets top bunk tonight, loser has watch duty.” I smiled.

  “You’re on.” He said, sitting down across from me.

  “How do you play?” Billie asked, sitting next to me.

  “Watch, learn, and don’t eat my cookie.” I told her, setting down my half eaten treat to shuffle and deal the cards.

  The cards dealt, Sully glanced at his hand and gazed at me, his best poker face firmly in place. “Hit me.”

  In a rare moment of perfect timing, Billie and I both reached over and smacked the side of his head.

  “Ow, that’s not what I meant,” He said.

  “I know,” I said, grinning. I pulled the first card off the deck and flipped it over. It was a five. “I’ll stay.”

  I peeked at my own cards, a solid fifteen. Chances were, he had a better hand, so I risked it and took another card, a six. “Dealer stays. What have you got?”

  “Eighteen” He said, smiling. “Do you want to go again, or admit defeat early?”

  “You should be asking yourself that question.” I said, flipping my cards over with a sickly sweet smile.”

  “Damn.” He frowned. “I’m not going down easy. Deal again.”

  I gathered the already played cards and set them aside.

  “Wait, I don’t get it.” Billie looked between us. “What’s the point?”

  “Black Jack is also called Twenty One. The point is to get as close to twenty one as you can without going over. If you do, you bust and automatically lose.” Sully answered.

  “Oh,” Billie said.

  I dealt again. “Hit or stay?”

  “Stay.” Sully answered.

  I glanced down at my cards. Crap. I had twenty two. “I’m bust. We’re even.”

  He grinned. “So what do you want to do cupcake? Best two out of three, or three out of four?”

  “Don’t call me cupcake.” I glared at him. “And I could go all night. Sweetheart.”

  Sully and Billie laughed. I handed the deck over to Sully, still glowering. I still didn’t want to think of those…feelings…that stirred themselves into agonizing existence when he held me.
>
  We kept going for half an hour, with me losing spectacularly. I cracked a joke about him stacking the deck, and he slapped the side of my head playfully.

  “Alright, I admit defeat. Get to bed.” I said.

  “Are you sure? You look like you could use some sleep.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I smiled and walked up to Dean, telling him to pull over for the night.

  The road cut through an open field, the overgrown grass dry and yellow. Dean and Billie happily fought over the other top bunk, Sully having already staked his claim. Dean won after he yanked her away from the beds and scrambled up before she could find her footing again. She punched him once, hard, and crawled, grumbling into the bottom bunk. They both yanked the curtains closed around themselves and Sully slid silently down, treading quietly to me as I reached for the door.

  “Where are you going?” He whispered.

  “I was going to climb on the roof. It has a better vantage point.” I said.

  “You’ll freeze out there.”

  “I’ve got a jacket.” I shrugged.

  “Please don’t go out there alone.” He grabbed my wrist, pulling me towards him.

  I melted a little at his touch.

  “I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself just fine.” I whispered.

  “If you insist on staying out there, I’ll go with you.” He said, the sweet jerk.

  “Sully.” I whispered, looking into his eyes in the near blackness. “Go to bed. I’ll be fine.”

  “No.” He protested.

  “Fine. I’ll patrol in here.” I gave up. “You really are an arrogant punk you know that, right?”

  He smirked at me.

  “Go. To. Bed.” I ordered.

  “Fine, fine.” He said, and returned to his bunk for the night.

  “And if I see you out here again for any other reason than to go to the bathroom, I will whack you with a spoon.” I whispered after him.

  “You know, we can hear you guys.” Dean called from the depths of his bed.