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JENNA
Carter has me sandwiched between his back and the wall of Creekside. My scalp prickles with fear, and even though I want to shove him out of the way, I’m afraid any small movement may escalate the situation.
“I’ll give it back.” Reed reaches into his hair. He plucks out a small package with several clear plastic eyedroppers inside, looking chagrined as he tosses it at the feet of the men.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Reed hide drugs in his hair. It was a well-known phenomenon throughout the dorm. Reed’s eight-inch afro is infamous for a variety of things, but chief among them is its ability to conceal drugs.
It was funny before the zombie outbreak.
It was funny before drug dealers came after us.
Anger crests inside of me as I glare at the droppers of acid. I struggle to hold back my rage, knowing it has no place in our current situation.
Eric doesn’t have the same self-restraint. “You fucking idiot,” he bursts out. “You risked all our lives so you can get high?”
“I’m sorry,” Reed says. “I was being stupid. I didn’t think—”
“Yeah, you didn’t think,” says the tall man. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Rest of it?
I want to scream as Reed reaches into one of his large cargo pockets and disgorges another dozen baggies. Inside each one are more plastic eyedroppers filled with acid.
“How did you know where the stuff was?” asks one man. He’s the shorter of the two, with a scruffy beard and a black hoodie with a peeling Nike logo.
“Word gets around,” Reed says. “I overheard Jay talking to some guys at a party last week. I knew he kept stuff in his car. The way things are now, I didn’t think anyone would be coming for his stash.”
The pieces click together. Reed broke into one of the abandoned cars to get drugs and got caught by these assholes.
“The way things are now,” the shorter man drawls. “Just because we’re in the middle of the fucking zombie apocalypse doesn’t mean Mr. Rosario’s men let Granjero’s men steal from us.”
Reed pales, his expression bringing a feral smile to both of the gun-wielding vagabonds. “How did you know I worked for Granjero?” he asks.
“We didn’t,” says the second hobo. He wears fraying cargo pants and a rumpled peacoat. “It was just a guess.”
“A guess you just confirmed,” says the other man.
I have no idea what any of this means, though I can hazard a guess. Reed must have been selling drugs on the side.
“Let my friends go,” Reed says. “They haven’t done anything.”
“Sorry,” says the taller man, though he doesn’t sound sorry. “Mr. Rosario says anyone who works for Granjero has to be eliminated. Anyone associated with—”
Someone leaps around the side of the building, wielding a large cast iron skillet. The skillet connects with the man’s head with a dull, wet thunk. He drops without a sound.
The shorter man whirls around. The gun cracks once, the sound making me jump.
The person with the skillet is faster. She swings it, knocking the gun from the man’s hand. Then, like a pro tennis player, she backhands the guy with the cast iron pan. The side of the guy’s face is crushed.
The world stills, quiets. The woman standing with the food-encrusted skillet is Carter’s mom. Her eyes are fierce, her face blazing with fury and retribution as she gazes at the two men lying before her bare, battered feet.
Both men are still and unmoving. Blood gushes from the face of the man she backhanded with the skillet. A slow seepage of blood flows from the skull of the first man she hit. Behind her, crouched at the corner of the building, are Johnny and Lila. Their mouths hang open, eyes wide as they take in the two bodies. Reed and Eric stare at the scene, agape.
I blink, trying to reconcile the woman in front of me with the skinny woman who limped into the dorm parking lot two days ago looking like she’d been dragged across the grill of a semi. I can’t align this hard woman with the broken woman Carter described, a woman crushed by grief after her husband died. I can’t align her with the image of a loving and slightly exasperated mother who ordered hops for my boyfriend off the Internet before he was old enough to drink.
From the look on Carter’s face, I can guess he’s having similar struggles. The woman in front of us is strong and, if I’m being honest, a tad scary. Maybe a lot scary.
Carter’s mom looks at him, eyes hard and unapologetic. “Sorry you had to see that, baby,” she says. “These men would have killed you. All of you.” Her eyes take in the rest of us. “Frederico and I had a run-in with Mr. Rosario. She tried to kill us. We barely escaped.”
“Mom,” Carter blurts, “you killed them.”
She sighs, her face taking on the look of an overly patient parent who doesn’t have the energy to explain a universal truth to a child.
“Go inside, sweetie,” she says. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
She sets the skillet on the ground, pausing to flick ants off her hands and arms with a grimace. Then she picks up the legs of one dead man. She drags him around the building and disappears from sight. Reed picks up the legs of the second guy, eyes still wide. He trails Carter’s mom around Creekside.
The rest of us follow the procession. A few of the vultures spring in the air when Reed and Carter’s mom get too close, flapping and squawking. A swarm of flies buzz upward in a cloud, disturbed by the movement.
From the edge of the parking lot, we watch Reed and Carter’s mom deposit the bodies in a pile. I see Reed exchange a few words with her, but they’re too far away to hear. When Reed wipes at his face, she puts an arm around him.
“She killed them,” Carter whispers, still sounding stunned.
“I know.” I don’t know whether to feel relieved or disturbed or terrified. I decide that it’s okay to feel all three.
“They would have killed us,” Eric says, licking his lips as he stares across the lot. Carter’s mom still stands with her arm around Reed’s shoulder, talking to him.
On a fundamental level, I understand she just saved our lives. Those guys would have killed us. But knowing this doesn’t reconcile the fact that I just watched my boyfriend’s mom kill two people with cold, lightning fast efficiency.
My mother won’t even kill a spider; she makes us do that for her or, if she sees more than a few in the house, she goes to the nail salon and calls an exterminator. But Carter’s mom killed those two men as easily as all of us kill zombies.
That hadn’t been easy at first, either, I remind myself.
*
CARTER AND I REMAINED barricaded in the dorm room with Reed, Eric, and Lila long after the soldiers had left. Long after the slaughter ended. The sound of gunfire continued off in the distance, either in town or on other parts of campus, but they weren’t at the dorms anymore.
We watched survivors creep out of nearby dorms and flee. Some went on foot, some took cars. Those that took cars attracted herds of zombies, but they disappeared from sight before we could see what happened to them.
We stayed where we were because we were too scared to move. Too scared to do anything except sit around and be afraid together.
It didn’t help that outside the barricaded door came the soft moans of Jake and Chris. They were two guys who’d been passed out on the living room floor when we made our way here. Having seen bite marks on them, we left them where they were.
Now they were back, undead and hunting for us. The door vibrated from their scratching and pounding.
“What are we going to do?” Reed hissed. “If we go out there, one of us could get bitten.”
No one answered him. None of us wanted to be the one to say what we were all thinking: To get past Chris and Jake, we had to kill them. Really kill them.
We saw the soldiers drop zombies with headshots. We knew the stories. It should have been fiction, yet somehow it had become our reality. The only way to stop the monsters on the other side of the door was to bash in their heads.
Even though we knew this, none of us wanted to be the first to say it. None of us wanted to be the one to do it. Chris and Jake were our friends. Our dorm mates. The idea of puncturing their skulls with a sharp object wasn’t right.
So we sat in quiet, pensive silence, hoping they would go away.
They didn’t.
The frantic pounding died away, but they remained outside the door, moaning and scratching at the wood.
I eventually forced myself to move. I dug around under the beds and in the closets. To my relief, I unearthed a good supply of snacks. There were granola bars and bottled water. Carter even found a case of mashed potato cups on the top shelf in the closet, which we mixed with lukewarm water from plastic bottles.
After nearly eight hours, all of us had to pee. Really bad. Reed suggested opening the window and whizzing out on to the roof, but none of us was brave enough to actually do it. Eric came up with the idea of peeing in the empty water bottles after we made the mashed potatoes.
None of this helped Lila and me. Reed was the one who suggested we relieve ourselves in the potato cups. After we ate the mashed potatoes, of course.
The room was sticky hot from all the bodies crammed inside. Even so, no one suggested opening the window to let in fresh air.
Sporadic gunfire continued outside. We tried to figure out where the soldiers were as time passed, but it was difficult to pinpoint. We concluded they were moving around, possibly rounding up the pods of kids who had turned. I cringed to think of the soldiers killing them.
As I squatted in the corner, peeing in my mashed potato cup, I saw Carter watching me. His jaw was clenched, his eyes hard.
“We can’t sit around and wait for things to get better on their own,” he said. “We don’t have enough water bottles and mashed potato cups to go another eight hours. If we want out of here, we have to do something.”
“Duh,” Eric said. “We know that.” At Carter’s glare, he added, “I just don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”
Carter stalked across the small space. “Move,” he said to Reed, who sat in one of the desk chairs.
Reed moved without a word.
Carter turned the wooden chair on its side, studying it. The legs were made of six pieces of wood that formed a square base.
“What are you doing?” Lila asked.
“Making weapons,” Carter replied.
He brought his foot down on the chair. It took a few tries, but he managed to snap it off from the base. Propping the base on the edge of the bed, he used his foot to snap it into six separate pieces. Then he took a pocketknife from his jeans and set it against the end of a chair leg.
The noise he made from breaking the chair set off Jake and Chris. One of them keened outside the door, nails grating along the door.
We all watched Carter in silence, transfixed on the sure movements of his hands, and he began to whittle the end into a sharp point.
We all jumped when my phone rang. This only increased Jake and Chris’s agitation.
I hurried into the closet, muffling my voice in the hanging clothes.
“Mom! Are you guys—?”
“Jenna, where have you been?” My mother’s annoyed voice carried over the line. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since you called earlier. Rachel said you were hysterical.”
Annoyance pricked at me, but I did my best to ignore it. Arguing with my mom never got me anywhere. “I’ve had my phone with me the whole time, but it hasn’t rung,” I tried to explain. “Everyone’s cell service has become intermittent since all this ... stuff started.”
“The authorities just sent out a non-mandatory evacuation notice,” Mom replied.
“What does that mean?”
“It means they’re suggesting we evacuate, but it’s not mandatory. I talked with your sisters and we decided we’re going to go up to the cabin for a few days. The weather is supposed to be clear, so we can lie out on the deck. It’ll give us a chance to work on our base tans before summer comes.”
Only my mother would consider the state of her base tan at a time like this. Ever since my dad left her for a younger woman, she spends more and more time obsessing over the way she looks. I wouldn’t care so much if that obsession didn’t carry over to my sisters and me. She’s always cared more about my clothes than my grades.
All this went through my head, but all I said was, “That’s a good idea. You guys should go up there and relax for a few days.”
“Why don’t you and that hairy boyfriend of yours come and join us?”
This sentence both irritated and pleased me. It irritated me that she’d never once called Carter by his first name, but it pleased me to hear annoyance and disapproval in her voice. Her disapproval of Carter was just further confirmation that I’d managed to land a good one. The guys my mother wanted me to date in high school were all rich, good-looking, grade-A assholes.
“We’ll try, Mom,” I said, even though I knew there’s no way in hell we’d make it to the cabin even if I wanted to go there.
“Damn it, my battery is running out,” Mom said. “Can we Skype before I lose all reception? We all want to see you with our own eyes and make sure you’re okay. Rachel did say you were hysterical.”
I didn’t really want to Skype with her. There is never a Skype conversation that transpires without some sort of negative comment about me. The color of my hair, the shirt I’m wearing, the condition of my skin—my mother misses nothing, especially an opportunity to point out areas of improvement.
Still, who knew when I’d get a chance to see her again? Her cell phone wasn’t the only one running low on battery. There was no telling how long cell phones would work considering the downward spiral of things.
“Yeah, okay.” I leaned out of the closet, giving Carter a questioning look. He stopped his whittling and joined me in the closet. There wasn’t much light, but there was enough for the phone camera to register our faces.
“We’re going to try and Skype with my mom,” I said. “She and my sisters are going to our family’s cabin in Big Bear. I told her we might try to join them.”
Carter nodded, understanding what I wasn’t saying. That Mom didn’t know how bad things were in Arcata and that he wasn’t supposed to tell her. Carter got my fucked-up relationship with my mother.
My hands moved of their own accord, mussing up his beard to make him look bedraggled. Carter disentangled my hand from his beard, frowning at me.
I felt like an idiot as soon as I realized I was subconsciously trying to rile up my mother. I didn’t need to do that right now.
I took a deep breath and hit the Skype button. When my mom and sisters filled the screen, I waved to them.
Waving back at me was a woman with large breast implants, BOTOX lips, and chemically induced blond hair. My mom had a lot of work done even before my dad—her cosmetic surgeon—left her for his yoga instructor.
On either side of my mom were my two sisters. Lisa, the older sister, fights her full figure with strict adherence to CrossFit and the Paleo diet. Rachel, my younger sister, thought every article of clothing designed for the torso needed to have a plunging neckline. Today, she was in a snug velour sweat suit that barely covered her breasts. I don’t know where she found this stuff, and I don’t know how she had time to worry about her cleavage with all the shit going down.
“Jenna, please tell me you’re going to let your hair grow back to its natural color when all this is over,” said my mom, frowning critically at me.
“And if you’re going to bring your lumberjack with you, please ask him to shave,” said Rachel.
“Hi, Rachel,” Carter said, ignoring the rude comment.
“Hi, Lumberjack,” she replied, not even bothering to grace him with a fake smile like she usually did.
“Be nice to my boyfriend,” I said, planting a full kiss on his lips. I feel like a jerk since that kiss was only for my family’s benefit, not mine and Carter’s.
“We’ll charge our phones while we’re driving, but there are reports of cell service being out all over the place,” said Lisa. “Get out of there as soon as you can and come to Big Bear.”
“I will.” I give them my best fake smile, my throat tight. I might not like my family very much, but I still love them. I want them to get to safety.
“Don’t let yourself go just because things might be rough for a while,” Mom said. “Keep up your skin care routine. And don’t forget to condition your hair.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, a mix of indignation and despair roiling inside me.
“I will, Mom. Travel safe.”
I let out a shuddering breath as the call was disconnected, unprepared for the sudden wave of emotion that hit me. This could be the last time I ever saw my mom and sisters.
When Carter put his arms around me, I buried my face in his shoulder. A few shuddering breaths left my body, but I managed to keep it together. I wiped my eyes dry on his shirt.
“I hope they make it,” I whispered.
“They will,” Carter said, voice strong and reassuring. “Things aren’t as bad in Southern California as they are here.”
I nodded, releasing him to return to his project. I buried all thoughts of my mom and sisters, forcing my attention back to our current situation: that of Chris and Jake pounding on the bedroom door.
It took us another few hours, but soon Carter had sharpened spears for all of us. By that time, the stuffy heat of the room had grown unbearable. I wiped sweat from my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt. As much as I didn’t want to confront Jake and Chris, I really, really wanted out of this room.
“Are we actually going to do this?” Eric asked as Carter passed out the homemade spears.
Bash in the heads of our former roommates? No one answered.
That’s when we smelled it. Smoke.
“Oh, shit,” Reed said. The wall between this bedroom and the room next door—the one shared by Reed and Eric—was smoking. Grayish white wisps curl into the air. With it came the distinct smell of pot.
“Dude, what did you do with that joint you were smoking?” Eric asked Reed.
“The joint I was smoking?” Reed demanded, offended. “That was our joint, dude. Not just mine.”
“But you were smoking it last.”
“That doesn’t make it mine! Besides, that was hours ago. No way that joint could have started a fire now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I snapped. “What matters is that something in your room caught fire.” No wonder it was so damn hot in here. I heft my makeshift spear. “We have to get out.”
The first black tendrils curl around the wall, bits of it crumbling away to reveal insulation. Carter shoved the dresser away from the door. Jake and Chris both keened and snarled, bodily throwing themselves at it.
“Jenna,” Carter said, “open the door on the count of three.”
I positioned myself beside the door that shook in its frame from the impact of those on the other side. Lila crouched behind me. She held her spear like a club, but from the look on her face, I wasn’t confident she’d use it.
Reed, Eric, and Carter lined up on the other side, each brandishing their chair leg spears. I’d say they looked like warriors, except they were all too terrified to be mistaken for warriors.
Before I turned the doorknob, the door exploded inward. Jake’s stocky frame tumbled through, covered in dried blood from a bad bite to the neck.
There were several seconds when all of us had the opportunity to lay into him with our spears. He was down, caught in the tangle of wood. But we stood there in frozen shock, staring at the blind, snarling thing that had once been our jovial friend. Flames of fire licked a widening hole in the wall.
Then Chris burst through, tripping and falling over Jake. He reached out with a bloody hand and grabbed my ankle.
In a state of panicked fear, I grasped my spear like a baseball bat. Screaming, I swung it at Chris’s head. I struck him in the temple, but only hard enough to enrage him. As he turned toward me with a growl, my chest seized with fear.
Carter leaped forward, gripping his spear with both hands. He slammed it downward.
Warm blood sprayed out, soaking my pants. Chris collapsed and went still. His grasp on my ankle slackened. I scrambled backward, breathing with rapid panic.
Jake bucked, throwing off Chris and crawling free. He moved like an animal, charging on all fours straight at Reed.
This time, no one hesitated. Carter shattered the spell that rendered us motionless seconds before. All of us leaped at Jake with our spears. I drove mine through his back. I felt the bone of his spine crumple beneath the impact. The force traveled up both arms and rattled my teeth.
Eric shoved one through the base of his skull. Carter and Reed’s pierced his neck and head.
Jake went still. The room fell silent, our harsh breathing mingling with the crackling flames.
Carter was the first of us to recover. He sprinted out of the room, heading toward the kitchen to retrieve the fire extinguisher.
When we had the fire out, we conducted a quick search of the remaining three bedrooms in the small apartment. Two were empty, but inside the third one we found someone. Or what was left of him. Craig had been almost completely eaten, his rib cage bulging upward from the floor. Torn pieces of his flannel shirt lay scattered around the room.
I clung to Carter, letting shock spread quietly through my body. I had just helped kill someone. Two someones. Arguably, both had already been dead, but did that excuse the act? I wasn’t sure.
*
I SWALLOW HARD AS I watch Carter’s mom comfort Reed next to the pile of bodies we cleared out from the Creekside dorm. Our small group had killed many of them. Even Lila had pitched in. Most of them had been concentrated in front of our building. We had to use the Attack and Stack method to keep them from breaking through the front door and stampeding us.
Was what we did to clear the dorm and save ourselves any different from what Carter’s mom had done? Somehow it seems different, killing real people versus zombies.
I resolve not to judge her. She saved us. I’ll focus on that.
“We should get inside,” she says as she and Reed cross the parking lot and return to us. To my shock, I see she has the guns from the men tucked into the waistband of her stretch pants. She sees me looking but doesn’t attempt to explain. Instead, she leads us inside, limping on her bad ankle.