Induction

“That was the hardest thing I’ve dealt with so far, I think. Chris knew he was turning and said goodbye to his son. He left us all in the house and just walked out the front door. We watched him from the window, half expecting a horde to descend on him. The street was eerily empty as far as we could see in either direction. He stopped in the middle of the road and turned back to the house, then his body just went rigid and he crumpled to the pavement and started to convulse. We were so fixated on what was happening outside, we didn’t even notice when Chris Junior opened the door and ran to his father. By the time he reached his dad, he had fallen still. He turned and, just like that, was devouring his son.

“We could have saved him but we were out of steam. Every movement felt like we were trudging through wet cement. The two of them lingered outside for days just milling around the area aimlessly. It was almost like they still knew they were home. Sometimes they even came up to the front door and just stood there. Eventually more and more of the wandering corpses joined them. We stayed there for a week eating the food Chris had managed to scavenge and drinking first the bottled water, and finally resorting to drinking the water from the toilet basins. A day went by after we ran out of food, and we knew starvation was inevitable if we didn’t get moving.”

Jake rubbed his face with his hands and leaned over to grab his water from the bedside table. As he leaned over I caught view of his bare chest. His abdomen was sunken in from malnutrition, and his ribs were painfully visible under the thin layer of skin. I traced the lines of the protruding ribs with my fingers, and he took my hand and brought it to his lips. Kissing each knuckle, he closed his eyes and relished in my touch.

“So,” he began again, “we left the house. We got lucky and found a small motorboat. There were no keys, but Tapper had some experience hot wiring cars in his teen bad boy years.” I made a mental note to keep my eye on Private Will Tapper since he was getting cozy with Meg. Jake must have read my mind. “He’s a good kid, just went through a rough patch is all. The army straightened him right out. Meg is in good hands. Not to mention I already gave him the speech.”

“Oh, God, not again with the over protective, smothering, big brother routine. Poor Meg, I don’t know how she’s put up with you all these years.” I’d teased him relentlessly about this topic in the past. That earned a faux innocent smile from Jake.

“Who? Me? I know nothing of what you speak.” We laughed at our ongoing joke. Things started to feel normal and some of the eggshells we’d been walking on started to fade away. After a few seconds, Jack continued his story.

“With Target being on the water, it was easy to get there. My heart sank as we drove the boat up to the back of the store. Whatever happened there left it in shambles. It was burnt nearly to the ground and teeming with zombies. I went to a very dark place for a while. It was a good thing I was traveling with five soldiers, because it took all of them to hold me down when I made an attempt to get out of the boat and search for you.”

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry you had to experience that. Trust me, I know all too well how the not knowing can fuck with your mind.”

“Yeah, well they managed to convince me you would have made it out safely. The soldiers think you’re pretty much the baddest chick they’ve ever met.”

My pride swelled at the compliment.

“We knew the location of the lighthouse. Since it was the group’s plan B, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what shape that place was in. I didn’t even slow down as we passed it. I knew there was no way you had gone there. So, plan C in effect, we headed towards Cape Harbour. I just kept repeating to myself that you were safe and finally I was sure of the truth behind it.

“About halfway through the city’s waterways the boat ran out of fuel and we were forced to abandon it and get our feet back on solid ground. We managed to tie up in a safe neighborhood, but I guess safe is a relative term these days. Daylight hours were spent on foot as we made our way through the neighborhoods. You think those streets suck to drive on with all the dead ends? Try doing it on foot! Finding safe places to wait out the darkness was the hard part. There wasn’t one night where we didn’t have to relieve a dead family of their home. We lost one more on the third night. He was bitten before we could get to him. It all happened so fast; he gave us a stiff salute and ate a bullet.

“There were five of us when we made it to the main street that runs parallel with this river. The soles of our shoes were damn near worn through from all the walking. We thought it would be a good idea to hide in one of the stores. Running for the window shade store, a pack of undead came around the corner of the 7-Eleven. We turned to run around the other side and were greeted by another group of them.