Zomb-Pocalypse 4

Chapter One

I'm numb, not emotionally, though I suppose if I let myself think about it–I'm that too... Emotions I can push down and ignore, at the moment, more pressingly I'm physically numb and there is nothing I can do about it. The cold on this mountain is worse than anything I've ever felt in my entire seventeen years. It's relentless and draining, and it's only the tail end of November. The snow is up to my knees and we get a fresh dump almost every night. It makes walking even short distances exhausting.

I toss a log into the back of the truck, not even caring that I didn't even make it to the very back of the box; we've given up stacking the wood neatly. I'm tired and hungry and cranky, and sick to death of snow. I know I sound like a whiner, but everything is just becoming too much. Megan, Abby, and I are still on wood chopping duty. We've filled the wood shed to the rafters, and the back entrance of the kitchen– we thought we were done, but Dad, Ryan, and Regg are building a second wood shed now and it's even bigger than the old one. I thought they were crazy at first, but after the first snow fall and the cold really settled in, I realized how much wood we've actually been using. Now I just hope we can stay ahead of it.

The only upside to any of this is that the cold isn't just freezing us to death, it's freezing the zombies too. We haven't seen any more on the mountain in over a week, and yesterday when Regg, Silas, and my Dad went down the mountain to look for supplies they came back and told us the craziest thing. The zombies are freezing solid. I imagine a zombie popsicle and make a face.

"Tag, you're it." Megan yells across to me as she slides out of the toasty warm truck and I don't need to be told twice. I jump into the front seat and right away I'm assaulted with a blast of heat. I gasp when it makes my skin prickle painfully as it tries to thaw out my frozen flesh. I bite the end of my gloves and pull them from my frozen fingers and fumble with the zipper on my jacket and pull it open so the heat doesn't have a barrier getting to my body. I take a look at the clock and begin counting down my ten minute warm up break.

It's never enough time and I'm tempted to fib, and stay in longer, but that wouldn't be fair to Abby, whose been freezing her butt off for the last twenty minutes. I quickly zip my coat back up and put my gloves on before I force myself out, gasping at the first icy blast of wind that hits me. My face prickles with pain as the skin begins to absorb the chill and the cycle starts all over again.

We fill the box up with chopped wood and decide to call it a day. It's only ten in the morning, and we might go out again this afternoon if we get really bored, but for now, I don't think any of us can stand it for one minute longer than we have to.

We warm up as we drive back to the cabin. Each of us is quiet; silently enjoying the motorized heat that's pumping through the vents­­–it's really become a luxury, and almost makes chopping the wood worth it.

The cab of the truck is silent, we don't laugh and joke like we used to. We don't giggle and blurt out hypothetical's either, like what we would do if we won the lottery, or what we would've taken in college, or what we would do if the zombies suddenly went away and the world returned to normal... I think we've all pretty much given up hope of that happening, even with the tentative good news that they're freezing up.

We pull in beside the poor dented up F-150 in the driveway and we all climb out of the vehicle, hesitant to leave the heat behind. Sometimes I feel a bit like the truck that Ryan, and I took from that dealership the day we left Camp Freedom. It was shiny and new when the apocalypse began, and now it's ugly and scarred. It can never go back to the way it was before and neither can I, no matter what happens with the zombies.

"You aren't coming in the house?" Abby asks when I turn and start walking in the other direction. I shake my head, even though it's pretty obvious that I'm not. I'm already half frozen; a few more minutes won't make much difference. "Do you want me to come with you?" She offers knowing exactly where I'm headed and I give her a small smile, grateful to have a friend who would freeze her ass off for me, even though it's the last thing she wants to do.