In the morning, Tobe makes breakfast of scrambled egg and bacon. The eggs are spongy and the bacon is soft, but it tastes like bacon and eggs, so I don’t complain. Anything is better than canned tuna day after day, whether it’s perfect or not.
Ryder and I finish our breakfast quickly, and I head back into the bedroom I share with Tobe to change for the day. I step into my “town outfit” that kept me alive and uninfected for so long in Louisville that I feel it brings me good luck.
It consists of a long sleeved thermal t-shirt, which is tucked into my faded blue jeans and black boots. Then I pull on a turtleneck shirt to avoid any bites or scratches on my neck. Golfer’s gloves come next, to protect my hands while allowing full range of motion.
Lastly, I tie back my long hair into a ponytail and then pull a headband on to keep my bangs out of my eyes. I don’t have sunglasses anymore; I lost them in Louisville, so I’ll have to be extra careful when it comes to my eyes.
Surprisingly, I’m ready before Ryder is. I’m not sure what’s taking him so long, but I don’t feel like waiting. If I had to get up early to go on a dangerous trip with him, the least he could do is not hold us up like this.
I pound on his bedroom door, and I hear him sigh. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
The door opens, and I find myself eye-level with his shirtless chest. His body is damp from a recent scrub, and he smells of something that might be vanilla soap. I knew that Ryder was fit, but his chest makes him look like a perfectly sculpted statue, and I don’t feel bad about ogling him.
Not only is he incredibly muscular, he also has an interesting tattoo that I haven’t seen before. It’s a line of beautifully ornate Celtic knots, and it runs across his lower abdomen from hip to hip, just underneath his navel, marred only by the thin trail of hair that leads into the waistband of his jeans. My eyes widen a little, and he clears his throat.
“Um…” I force my eyes up to his, and find a bemused look on his face.
“Like what you see?” he asks, not for the first time. His smile is arrogant and confident, but it sadly doesn’t make him any less attractive. I realize that I’m leaning towards him, and quickly pull away.
“Aren’t stomach tattoos kind of girly?” I ask, immediately deflating his overblown ego.
He clears his throat again, this time more embarrassed than cocky. “Well, I uh, didn’t exactly pick it out myself.”
“Did a girlfriend?” I ask with a smirk. I just knocked him off balance, and I’m not about to let up. “Or did you lose a bet? Because there’s no way any man’s man is going to get a tattoo in that area.”
“Actually, I was wasted when I got to the tattoo shop, and I don’t really remember that night all too well. But uh, you didn’t seem to mind it when your eyes were about to pop out of your skull just a second ago.”
And just like that, he flips it around, and I’m the one that’s embarrassed. “They were not,” I say defensively. “I was just surprised to see that you had a tattoo in such a girly place.”
“Because the rest of me is so hot?”
I shake my head and walk away. I can hear him pulling on a shirt from behind me, and I’m sorely tempted to peek over my shoulder for one last glance of his body before it disappears, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction. He already knows he’s hot; I don’t need to tell him he’s right anymore than I already have.
Reese and Tobe are cleaning dishes in the kitchen sink with boiled water from the lake, and they nod to us as we pass by. “Be careful,” Tobe says, looking at us. Her gaze turns to Ryder. “If she doesn’t come back in one piece, you won’t stay in one piece, got it?”
Reese snorts, and Ryder shakes his head. “I got it; we’ll be careful.” He nudges me with his elbow. “Let’s go. I’d like to scavenge around for some more supplies on our hike back.”
I follow him out to the front door. “What more could we possibly need right now? We have a pretty decent first aid kit, we have quite a bit of ammunition, we have MRE’s, and we have canned food too. There’s water from the lake that we can sorta purify, we have clean clothes, and we have company. Good company. What else is there?”
“We have only one flashlight, and one spare battery. We could always use more medicine or bandages just in case, and the food will run out eventually, remember that. Plus, there are probably other things we can find that we don’t necessarily miss right now. Just keep your eyes open today.”
I follow Ryder down to the dock, where the boat is tethered to one side. He tosses an empty duffel bag into the back, and I climb aboard. Next to the empty duffel bag is a bright red gasoline container, and when I pick it up, I notice that it’s almost empty. “Are we hunting for gas too?”
He nods. “We’re gonna need that if we ever have to leave this place.”
“Why would we?”
“Even if we manage to clear out every zombie on the island, we’ll run out of supplies eventually. There are about two hundred MRE’s, and a few days more of canned goods, but food won’t just fall from the sky. We can hunt, but the game will disappear too.”
“So we’ll make more.”
“Make more game?” he asks, starting the boat. “Wow, are you serious?”
“Yeah, why not? There’s a fenced in area, right? If we could catch a couple of deer, we could have more soon enough. Same with rabbits or turkeys. There’s even a rabbit hutch against the side of the garage. All we have to do is clean it out and find two rabbits. Then we’ll have ten rabbits. Then we’ll have fifty rabbits. Then we’ll have a hundred rabbits. Then we’ll have–”
“Alright! I get what you’re saying,” he says, shaking his head. “Even if we did successfully breed rabbit, deer, and turkey, we won’t survive out here forever. Now, let’s focus more on our surroundings than on talking.”
I shake my head, and lean over the side of the boat. It’s almost ten o’clock, and the sun is already high up in the sky. It’s not as warm as it was yesterday or the day before, and I wonder if winter is slowly approaching. “I wonder what the date is.”
“I don’t know. Early September. Maybe the fourth or fifth. If you’re worried about snow, don’t be. We won’t get that for probably another five or six weeks. We’ve got time to prepare before we get snowed in.”
“Alright, if you say so.”
Neither of us speaks for a few minutes. When Ryder stops the boat, I notice a small alcove hidden by a dense group of trees. The boat slowly coasts to a stop, and Ryder begins pulling tree branches over the boat, trying to hide it as best as he can. I watch him from land.
The empty duffel bag is slung over my shoulder, and the gas can is sitting at the ground by my feet. When Ryder is done, the boat is almost invisible to anyone sailing by, and he quickly joins me. “Not bad, huh?” he asks, grabbing the nearly empty gas can. “Come on, let’s get moving. There’s a house about a quarter of a mile that way,” he says pointing. “I’m thinking we can check for any available gas or supplies.”
I just nod my head and follow Ryder as he walks into the trees. Everything around here looks the same to me: green. I’m not sure how he can find his way through here so easily, but I trust his sense of direction. If he says we’re heading in the right direction, then we’re heading in the right direction.
We walk in silence through the trees. Neither of us has anything constructive or useful to say, so we just keep our mouths shut. It’s not like we can talk about stupid things like sports, the weather, or plans for the weekend. This is the apocalypse, and the only important thing right now is survival.
And that’s the only thing that will be important for the rest of our lives. Sports, music, movies, and weekend plans will never again be important, only survival. Every day will be the exact same as the previous one, and the next one.
Wake up, wash, eat, survive, eat, survive, eat, sleep, and repeat. That’s all our lives will amount to now that the rest of the world is either gone or infected. Can I really spend the rest of my life with just Ryder, Reese, and Tobe? Or wil
l we eventually get too sick of each other to stay?
Ryder doesn’t actually need to stay right now. Sure, this place will be easy to defend and survive on, but the three of us are only holding him back. If Ryder decided to leave, would Reese follow and leave me and Tobe both alone?
“Hey, pay attention!” Ryder hisses, putting his arm out. I run into it, and he yanks me back into the line of trees around us. We’ve been walking for some time, and there’s a house about a hundred yards in front of us. All of the lights are off, not that I expected them to be on, and the front door is open.
There’s a red truck in the driveway, but it looks like it hasn’t been used in a while. The grass is brown and overgrown, and there’s a mostly dead tree in the front yard. A wraparound porch leads up to the front door, and a wooden porch swing hangs at one end. Part of it’s been ripped from the roof, and it hangs at an odd angle, creaking back and forth.
But that’s not what catches my attention the most. Ryder is tense by my side, and I glance at him. “I see it too,” he says quietly. I look back at the house, looking at the large chimney near the back of the house. Smoke is rising slowly from the chimney.
“Someone’s here on the island with us,” Ryder says, tightening his grip on his assault rifle.