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KATE
As I look at my tired face in the mirror, something occurs to me: I’m healthy. I’m almost recovered from my two-hundred-mile run. I have a few achy twinges here and there and the poison oak is still hanging out, but overall my body feels good. The swelling in my ankle is almost gone. I can lace on a shoe without discomfort. Even better, I’m not showing any signs of a waterborne illness. I’d been forced to drink unfiltered water on my way here, a risky move at best.
I may have hair badly in need of a cut and color, and I could benefit from an extra ten pounds, but in light of how bad things could be, I find it hard to care about my physical appearance.
I exit the bathroom and head into the living room. Everyone has gathered there, eager for the expedition to Trading Post. The exception is Lila. She still refuses to leave Creekside.
“This is going to be epic,” Reed is saying as I enter the room. “It’s my childhood fantasy to walk into a store and take whatever I want without paying for it.”
“Your childhood fantasy is stealing?” I ask.
He shrugs, unapologetic. “I grew up in the Oakland ‘hood. Stealing is practically in my DNA. Except that my dad would have whooped my ass if he ever caught me.”
That gets a few soft chuckles.
“You should come,” Jenna says to Lila. “What if more of those drug mules show up, or those College Creek guys?”
“You have a bigger chance of running into them out there than I do in here,” Lila replies.
“I’ll stay back,” Eric says casually, flipping through his collection of video games.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Lila says.
Eric rolls his eyes. “Who says this is about you? I want the Xbox to myself for a few hours.”
The others groan, but I see the way Eric looks at Lila. They might argue and bicker, but under the surface, I suspect Eric likes Lila. He has a lame way of showing it, usually goading her into an argument.
“No way,” Jenna says. “You guys have to pull your weight if you stay behind.”
“What do you want us to do?” Lila asks cautiously.
“Go through the cleared dorm rooms and find all the toilet paper, Kleenex, and paper towels,” Jenna says. “Find all the cleaning supplies and first aid supplies. Make an inventory and find a logical place to store it in room two-oh-four. That’s our supply room.”
Lila’s mouth is set in a thin, scared line, but Eric shrugs and says, “Okay, we can do that.”
“You gather the stuff,” Lila says. “I’ll organize it and write up the inventory.”
Should I be worried that Lila is so uncomfortable leaving the apartment? It’s a problem to be chewed on another time.
Twenty minutes later, Carter, Jenna, Reed, Johnny, and I are all astride bikes. Three of them came from the cleared dorm rooms; the other two were liberated from the rack outside the dorm. Reed was surprisingly savvy when it came to opening the U-Lock bike locks. A simple ballpoint pen was all it had taken to jimmy them open.
“It’s amazing what you can learn on YouTube,” he told me with a proud grin.
The five of us now pedal our way down Granite Avenue. I’d prefer to be on foot. It’s quieter and, to be honest, I’m more comfortable on foot than on a bike. But the others aren’t in the necessary shape to make a journey of several miles on foot, so I agreed to the bikes. At least they’d been smart enough to know we couldn’t use a car.
The silence of the road is broken only by the squawk of birds and the buzz of flies congregated on the dead bodies. I scan the blank-faced buildings. My shoulder blades itch like I’m being watched, but there’s no telling if that’s my paranoia or my instinct talking.
The smell is worse than ever. We have handkerchiefs over our mouths and noses, but flimsy pieces of fabric aren’t enough to combat the stink of the rotting dead, which are fully encrusted with black flies and carrion birds.
We’re going to have to figure out a way to deal with the bodies sooner or later. Living around the smell and rot is not a good thing. I make a mental note to keep an eye out for a bulldozer or some kind of CAT while we’re in town.
“We should try to find some essential oil or perfume for the handkerchiefs,” Jenna says. “It would help combat the stink a little.”
“How about some patchouli?” Reed asks. “I know a few shops where we can find that.”
Everyone snickers. There’s an ongoing joke in Arcata about the hippies who use patchouli oil instead of deodorant. I had been nervous that Jenna was one of them when I first met her. And though she doesn’t shave her armpits—something I’ve come to overlook since getting to know her—she does use standard deodorant.
She and Carter pedal beside one another in easy silence. I’m not sure what transpired between the two of them last night, but things are different now. The stiff resentment is gone, and they’ve even smiled at each other a few times. That, coupled with the fact I finally have this group of kids looking forward instead of at the Xbox console has me in a good mood.
We slow as we reach the end of the street and make the turn onto the road that hugs the outer perimeter of the main campus. This part of the college isn’t in much better shape than our area. Bodies are everywhere, along with abandoned cars and military Jeeps. A wrought iron fence stands between the road and the large sports field on the front end of campus. Dozens of undead mill around on the field. A few turn at the sound of our passage, but most are too far away to hear us.
The world around me flips back and forth. Part of me sees the campus Carter called home the last two years: the white stucco buildings, the vast green lawn where students congregated to play soccer and football, the salty tang of the ocean air that’s always in my nostrils, and the redwood trees rising up alongside the buildings.
The rest of me sees the wreckage of the present. The burned buildings. The bodies. The death.
Only the smell of the ocean is unchanged, but even that mingles with the stench of rotting corpses.
We reach the edge of the campus. Humboldt State University sits apart from the rest of Arcata. Between us and the town is a wide freeway that sits below the street level, making it possible to look down on the abandoned road where there are more cars, bodies, and zombies.
An overpass spans the freeway, connecting the college to the town of Arcata. From where we stand, the town doesn’t look all that different. If you ignore the burned-out buildings. And the bodies. Even from here, I see bodies in the streets.
We pause at the edge of campus, all of us in a silent semicircle. There’s no telling what we’ll find in the streets of Arcata.
“Keep your weapons ready.” I heft my screwdriver to emphasize the point. “Make as little noise as possible. If something happens and we’re separated, get back to Creekside.”
We exit the campus, weave through the cars clogging the overpass, and cross into downtown Arcata.
“Slow down,” I call as the sound of moaning reaches my ears. “I hear them.”
Everyone slows, the bikes falling into line behind me. I pull to a stop at the corner of a strip mall and look into the street beyond.
Two dozen zombies mill around in the street. The closest is a good ten yards from where we stand, giving us a decent amount of clearance.
“We can get by them,” I whisper-shout. “Just pedal fast.”
We zip across the street, pedaling hard for the next turn. The zombies rotate at the sound of our passage, their bodies moving in strange synchronicity. I lead the kids in a hard left turn, angling deeper into the town.
Old houses spring up on either side of us, colorful bungalows leftover from the logging era. They’re a mixture of storefronts and small shops.
I bite my lip as we turn onto another street, this one with more zombies in the middle of the road. I wish we were on foot. It would be easier to sneak through the town undetected. The soft whir of the bike pedals sound like gongs going off in these dead-quiet neighborhoods.
I mentally trace the map of Arcata in my head. I know the streets well, having run through them many times over the past two years when I visited Carter. We can turn and backtrack to another street that leads to the central square where Trading Post is located, or we can push through this street.
I count ten zombies in front of us. Less before us than behind.
“We pedal through them,” I murmur, brandishing my screwdriver. “Kill any that get too close. Stay together.”
I pick up speed, gripping the handlebar with one hand and the screwdriver in the other. Around and behind me are Carter and his friends, every one of them wielding their wooden spears.
The first zombie half runs, half shuffles in my direction. His legs are partially decomposed, and he can’t move too fast. Flies and maggots swarm his left thigh, leading me to believe that’s where he was bitten.
I aim my bike in his direction, jamming my screwdriver into his eye socket as I do.
The bike keeps going, but the screwdriver gets stuck in the socket. I tip sideways, dragged down by the dead weight of the impaled body. My leg shoots out, catching me, and I manage to yank the screwdriver free without falling off.
Johnny isn’t so lucky. As his spear punches through the face of an oncoming zombie, the creature falls on him. The bike makes a loud rattle as it tips over, pinning Johnny’s leg to the ground.
I leap off my bike and race toward him. The zombie he stabbed is dead, but the body is draped across the bike with Johnny underneath. I reach for the body as three more zombies close in.
Jenna wheels her bike around, planting herself between us and the oncoming zombies. Carter wheels up beside her, the two of them striking out with their spears.
Reed rolls up behind us and faces off against a zombie of his own. I fling aside the dead body, freeing Johnny. He scrambles up, jumping back onto the bike.
“Go!” I hiss.
Jenna and Carter finish off their zombies and push hard against the bike pedals, breaking free of the melee. I race back to my bike, which is tipped over in a clump of bushes. Just as I grab it, a figure looms up from the other side of the greenery.
He was homeless when he was alive, his skin sun-darkened and half his teeth missing. He growls at me, bunching his legs to spring.
I don’t give him a chance. Straddling my bike, I lunge across the bushes and bury my screwdriver in his forehead. I yank my weapon free, not waiting to see the body hit the ground before slamming down on the pedals.
I race to catch up with the others, who keep glancing back in my direction to be sure I’ve made it. We race in a clump down the street. There are a few more zombies. We pick up speed and swerve around them.
Reaching the next intersection, we slow long enough to scan every direction. We need to go left, toward the plaza, but that way is clogged with cars, zombies, and dead bodies. By the amount of shell casings shining on the ground, I’d say a shootout happened here.
The ways forward and to the right aren’t much better.
“Which way?” Reed hisses.
“Straight,” I say.
We pedal another few blocks, breaking up as we swerve around zombies.
The moaning has increased in the streets around us. Somewhere nearby, several high-pitched keens rend the air. I look over my shoulder and see a large pack of the undead rounding the corner.
We’re making too much noise, drawing too much attention.
“There’s an alleyway half a mile up the street,” I call, pitching my voice as loud as I dare. “On your left. Turn down that way.”
With any luck, the zombies will have a hard time figuring out how to follow us into the narrow opening.
I zip around one of the undead only to find myself in a near head-on collision with another. I grit my teeth and rise up on the bike pedals, giving myself leverage over the oncoming creature. I stab it through the eye. As it drops from the blow, I yank my screwdriver free.
Two creatures converge on Jenna, each of them a silver-haired woman in a flowing skirt. Jenna spins to take out the nearest of them, her spear missing the old lady’s head and instead punching through her sternum. The impaled zombie claws her way toward Jenna, bloodied hands reaching.
Carter drops his bike and sprints to her side, his face a mask of fear and determination. He grabs the impaled zombie by the hair and hauls her backward. He swings his spear like a bat, clubbing the old lady so hard her skull cracks.
Jenna spins around to face the last of the old ladies. She’s lost her spear, but her expression is fierce. She leaps free of the bike and shoves both hands against the zombie. As the creature topples backward, she pounces. One booted foot comes down on the old lady’s face, smashing through bone. Bits of blood and bone fragments spray in every direction.
“There’s too many of them,” Johnny wheezes, dispatching an undead with half a dozen facial piercings.
He’s right. Zombies flood the street from both directions, their eerie keening cutting the air. There’s no way to break through them without getting killed.
“Into that house.” I charge up the steps of a pink bungalow.
I raise my screwdriver, ready to shatter the window if need be, but the door swings open under my hand.
“Inside!” I hold it open as the others rush past me.
A zombie scrambles up the steps, hard on the heels of Reed. I slam the door in its face.