December 16th
I cling to Liam’s hand as the two of us run barefoot through the streets of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Each breath is a struggle, and my eyes are having trouble focusing in the night, but I don’t let my legs stop moving. There will be no escaping reality today. If we stop, we die.
We had been staying in a seemingly abandoned townhouse on our way south to Georgia. We knew we couldn’t stay long, so we gave ourselves just one night to rest before getting back on the road. The infected are everywhere, and their hold on the world is growing every day. One night was all we could spare.
My lungs are on fire.
I don’t think I can run for much longer.
As we move through the night, I replay the last few hours in my mind to try and keep my focus off of the sharp pains in my feet and the way my vision seems to be narrowing.
We fell asleep a little after midnight in a nice looking house. Well, a safe looking house, but that’s all that really matters anymore. It still had windows and a door we could lock behind us, so that counted for a lot.
I got up to find water, and bumped into a table. It was dark, and the house was completely unfamiliar. The beige lamp that had been resting on the side table wobbled and fell, shattering into a million pieces. Liam woke with a gasp, and I heard him sit up from his spot on the couch.
Then I heard it.
A door opened upstairs with a low groan, and Liam flicked on our one flashlight, shining it toward the stairs. We heard several thumps, the top stair creaked, and then we were running for our lives.
We didn’t have time to grab any of our things—not our weapons, not even our shoes. One look at the person at the top of the stairs and we knew what we were dealing with. There was no time to waste.
We were so exhausted that we didn’t even stop to clear the house before curling up in the living room.
My mind was still fuzzy as it happened, and the whole thing took less than a minute. There isn’t nearly enough to keep me from focusing on every rock and glass shard as that cuts into me.
We try to run quietly, but my breathing comes as a mixture of wheezes and gasps. I try to use each jab as a push to keep running. We’ve picked up two more pursuers, but they’re zombies, long dead, and they just shamble after us. If we keep moving, they won’t catch us.
But their moans could alert others. Still, it’s not them that have me pushing down a panic attack.
Despite us slamming the front door behind us, the house’s resident managed to follow us onto the road. Who knows how long it had been lying in wait up those stairs, but one noise from us and it figured out how to open a door.
That’s probably what I hate most about these new Zs—they’re too smart for my own good. They’re already faster and stronger than the infected we learned to fight in the first wave; they shouldn’t be able to problem-solve too. It feels like cheating.
We turn a corner, and after a moment I see a figure in the darkness ahead, waving their arms frantically. I pull Liam’s hand in another direction, convinced we’ve stumbled on yet another threat but he stops me. “They’re motioning for us to go over, I think.”
“You think?” I ask, my voice coming in rasps.
“What other choice do we have? I can’t keep running much longer.” His voice seems as level and strong as ever, and I’m sure he’s just being gallant, but he has a point. I need to stop.
I change direction, running toward the stranger and pulling Liam with me.
As we approach, it’s clear the stranger is a woman and very much alive. She’s dressed in all black and beckons us to follow her.
The sound of hurried footprints rushes out from behind us. Turning my head, I see someone behead both of the Zs that were following us, but I can’t stay long enough to see if our rescue crew manages to take out our main pursuer.
“In here,” the woman says in a hushed voice, leading us down into a storm cellar. I’m struck by what a stupid plan this is. We’ve met a lot of people on the road so far, and very few have been trustworthy. Everyone needs to look out for themselves now. But what choice do we have?
We enter a dimly lit room and face a burly looking black man. The woman locks the door behind us.
“Take off your clothing, now,” she snaps, glancing up the stairs every few seconds.
I pull my nightshirt over my head without questioning her motives. Back in September, being strip-searched for any sign of a bite mark was the most mortifying thing I had ever experienced. Now, I take it as a good sign. If they want to kill us for the few items we have, it would be a waste of time to check us for infection.
My lungs are still burning.
They let us keep our underwear on, but I still blush at the thought of Liam in his boxers, standing right beside me. I’ve seen him topless a few times before, either when he’s been changing or the few times when we had a quiet moment together. We haven’t been in one place long enough to take it much further than that, and the thought still makes my stomach flutter.
I glance over casually, but Liam’s looking right at me. We both laugh and look away, causing the woman examining me to smile wryly. She’s probably wondering how a couple of flirty idiots like us have managed to survive this long.
It hasn’t been easy, but I know I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him.
Half an hour later, we’re dressed, and sitting around a table with eight other survivors as Liam bandages my feet. Everyone else is looking at us like we’re certifiable.
“I’m telling you, you do not want to go south,” Marjorie, the woman who rescued us, says. “The farther you go, the more cannibal types you find.” She’s convinced that the living infected are merely those whose minds have cracked under the strain of all this violence. She thinks they’ve turned themselves, hoping the dead will mistake them for one of their own.
“I’m tellin’ you,” Liam argues, his voice taking on more of a Southern twang, “we met a man last month who told us to head for the CDC. Said they were working on fixing all of this. We’ve got to try.”
“I hate to break it to you, son, but Atlanta was overrun not too long ago,” a man the others call Giant Jack, says. “Maybe two weeks, tops. For days we got groups of people heading north, convinced the cold of Canada would freeze the dead and provide some safety.” Jack’s probably in his forties, but even though the others are older, they seem to hold him in a position of authority.
“Dragged a whole mess of them cannibals through with them,” Marjorie scoffs under her breath. “Got Danny killed.” She wrings her hands together as her eyes lock on mine.
I don’t know who Danny was, but I hate hearing her talk as though these people had any choice. “They aren’t cannibals. They’re infected,” I snap at her, hating the way she’s looking at me as though I might attack her at any moment.
“Now, now, that’s no way to be talkin’ to people who have taken you in,” another lady whose name I don’t know chides me. Guilt creeps up as my panic starts to melt away.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” I blush, hating to have these strangers all looking at me like I’m a bad seed. They’ve already made a few comments about how they don’t get many of ‘my kind’ in these parts, and I don’t want to draw further attention to my brown skin and Arabic name.
Giant Jack nods understandingly and pats my knee. My instinct is to shy away from the touch, but I’m grateful for the gesture.
“She’s right though,” Liam adds, coming to my rescue. “We’ve heard things about these new infected. There are way more of them than can be explained by Stockholm Syndrome. People are saying it’s because of the vaccine.” At that, all eight faces turn toward Liam while I pick absently at my nails. Liam and I have rehashed this so many times already, but I’m curious to hear some new perspectives.
“Do you have any real information to back that up?” Jack asks patiently.
“We heard that when anyone who was inoculated is bitten, they survive like they’re supposed to, but the infection takes over anyway. The vaccine only stops the virus from being fatal, and slows the illness. It doesn’t stop it from taking over your mind. The infected still change, still feel the hunger, but they’re alive. Living and breathing as they hunt us down.” I look up and see that the group mostly looks confused. How have these people survived for this long by just burying their heads in the sand and pretending they know what’s going on?
As soon as we started encountering the second strain of the infection, it was obvious something was different. Yes they’re so much more dangerous, but they’re actually easier to stop. They can be killed in many of the same ways we can. They may not feel pain, but if you manage to chop off something important, they’ll bleed to death all the same.
But it’s not the living part that is supposed to make these people think; it’s the implication of why they’re so much smarter. These creatures— these people—aren’t just functioning on instinct alone. They’re thinking, reasoning. It’s as though their minds are intact, at least on some level. Only Jack’s face registers any comprehension.
“That would explain so much,” he says, his voice hushed. “They’re stronger and faster because they aren’t decaying.”
Liam and I nod but don’t interrupt the man’s thought process. I struggled with the same ideas not too long ago. Was my aunt still out there somewhere, alive but devouring other survivors? It’s all too horrible.
“It would also explain their increased mental capabilities,” Giant Jack says, causing several heads to snap towards him.
“How do you mean?” the man to my right asks.
“Think about it. We know from the first wave that when the dead reanimate, their minds are reduced to those of animals. They’re working off of basic instincts. But if they don’t die before they turn, maybe they retain more of what they were. Not enough for speech or morality, obviously. But enough.”
“They’re calling this version of the virus The Hitchhiker Strain,” I explain. “The virus gets into your body, but it doesn’t kill you. For a while you’re both there, sharing one body. At first, you’re even in control.”
“But in the end, the virus wins anyways,” Liam finishs for me. I nod, but continue to run through all of the information we have. This alone oesn’t really explain why these new Zs are so much more dangerous than the first wave.
“What if…” I whisper, struggling to find a way to voice a fear I’ve been carrying on my own as Liam fought against just how horrible our world really is now. “What if no part of them really dies? What if the infection just takes over, but their minds are still completely intact.”
“That’s nonsense,” Marie says. “They’re just crazy, is all.”
Despite Marie’s own brand of crazy, I want to believe her. But I can’t. We’ve seen too much.
All I can think about is my bubbly aunt being forced to spend the rest of her days watching on in silent horror as her own body commits horrible acts of violence.