Refuge: Tales from a Zombie Apocalypse

Dreamtime

  Cara walked down the street as quickly as she could manage, wishing it was easier to breathe. She thought she was safe. She had waited a week in the old apartment over the hardware store, carefully rationing her food and water until a full day had gone by without any zombies walking through the streets below.

  She couldn't believe how patient she had been. If you had told her, before, that she would watch out a window for days on end with nothing else to do, she would have said that you didn't know teenage girls very well. But her phone's charge had died some time while she was still delirious, and she didn't have her ereader or laptop, or TV, or a radio, or even a landline that worked. There were a couple of battered old paperbacks in the apartment, but nothing she was interested in reading.

  The apartment was a puzzle.

  Cara had woken up there, alone, sweating profusely and clawing her way up out of fever dreams that blended with her memories and made everything suspect. She had never been there before, had no idea who it belonged to or how she had gotten there, or why she had been left alone.

  Someone had left her an assortment of canned food, and a bathtub filled to the brim with water. So she had eaten, and drunk her fill, and improvised a chamber pot out of a big stock pot with a lid.

  And then she had looked out the window.

  The street below was filled with zombies the first time she looked out. She had frozen, sure she was hallucinating, but unable to make herself call out and question what she was seeing.

  Instead, she watched.

  Now, she walked, wondering if she'd even be able to run if she needed to. But she was out of food, and running low on water, and sometime during the last day, as she watched the street and saw nothing moving, the idea of walking to the pharmacy for some cough medicine had coalesced into a plan.

  Not much of a plan, she thought, pausing to try and catch her breath. She swayed where she stood, and took the moment to look around. A plastic grocery bag scuttled along the sidewalk in the wind, but nothing else moved. She stood in the middle of the street, looking back at the hardware store. It felt like she'd been walking for half an hour at least, but there it was, maybe ten yards away. The pharmacy was another two blocks.

  Maybe I'm dreaming, she thought. One of those frustration dreams where everything takes forever, there's always something in the way, and you can never really get anywhere. She rather hoped that she was still dreaming. It would explain the zombies, and why she was so completely alone.

  But not the tightness in her lungs. That physical sensation was too real to ascribe to a dream, though she couldn't hear herself wheezing the way she usually could with a chest cold. Maybe I'm just still sick, she thought. If my chest is really this congested, it could make it into my dreams. Like when I really need to pee…

  She started walking again, trying to remember the sensation of waking up, of switching over from dream perception to real body perception. She felt dizzy, but the world stayed solid around her.

  Stuck, she observed, if I'm dreaming rather than awake.

  Neither option seemed truly reassuring. Even in dreams where she was drowning, she could still breathe, still feel the air passing through her nose and throat. That contrast was usually what woke her, in fact. So if she was dreaming that she was having trouble breathing, then her real body was having trouble breathing, and she needed to wake up and do something about it.

  On the other hand, if she wasn't dreaming, there was something seriously wrong with the whole world, and she was still having trouble breathing.

  In and out, she thought, trying to calm herself. Just keep breathing. Whether I'm dreaming or awake, the first thing to do is to keep breathing. Just keep breathing.

  That mantra got her the rest of the way to the pharmacy, where she stared in the window for several minutes before trying the door. It was open, but the pharmacy was empty, of both zombies and medicine. It looked like someone had systematically cleared all the shelves, not just in the public area, but behind the counter as well.

  Just like a frustration dream, she thought, swaying a little. Nothing to do but play it out, though, either way. All right, grocery store next.

  She went out the back door, since the nearest grocery store was along the street behind the pharmacy. After that, she could try the nearest gas station, and after that... well, if she was dreaming, then hopefully by then she would wake up, and her Mom would give her some cough medicine. If she wasn't... Deal with it then, she thought. Right now, just keep going.

  Stumbling down the street to the grocery store, she felt a bit like a zombie herself. The longer she stayed up, the more tired and clumsy she felt, and the lightheadedness didn't help at all. A bench she had never noticed before loomed up in front of her, and she gratefully staggered over to it and sat down.

  Cara closed her eyes, and slouched down until her head could rest against the back of the bench. Her back and ribs hurt, and each breath felt like a triumph. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

  "Hey!"

  She startled up from her slouch, gasping for breath as her heart started going double-time. Her wild eyes focused on two men standing a couple of yards away, looking at her warily and holding shovels as if they were weapons.

  She tried to catch her breath, to ask who they were, but instead she doubled over in a coughing fit as her lungs reacted to the adrenaline by trying to turn themselves inside out. When she was done, she lay on her side on the bench, eyes closed, holding herself tight against the pain.

  "You're the Winters girl, aren't you? Thought you were dead."

  Cara opened her eyes and looked up at the men, who were still holding their shovels defensively. "Not yet," she croaked. "But I think I might be dreaming."

  The older one barked out a laugh. "I wish. And where exactly did you come from?"

  "Um..." She looked past them, gathering her thoughts. "I was in an apartment, over the hardware store. I don't know how I got there."

  The younger man lowered his shovel. "Ed…"

  The older man held up a hand, but lowered his own shovel. "I guess you were sick with the flu, then, when the rising started. Is that right?"

  Cara shrugged. "It felt like the flu, I guess. I was pretty feverish. I'm not sure what memories are real, and what are nightmares." She eyed the younger man. "You're Joey Blake, aren't you? Didn't you go away to college?"

  He nodded. "I came back when my parents got sick. Then pretty much everyone got sick. And then…"

  Cara looked around. "If I'm not dreaming, why is the town empty? Why was I all alone? Mom wouldn't have left me alone."

  Ed scowled at her. "I'm not proud of it, but it was necessary."

  She cocked her head to the side. "What was necessary?"

  He sighed. "Stranding you like that. Flu was killing too many people, and as soon as they died they got up and started killing more, y'know? So the sick had to be isolated. Couldn't leave you all together, or one dead one would kill the rest, couldn't nurse you, or a death would kill the nurse. So we left you all alone, and hoped for the best."

  Cara stared at him. He was talking about the dead rising as matter-of-factly as if they were bread. "I did... see the zombies. But my mom…"

  Joey shook his head. "I haven't seen her at the shelter."

  "Died three weeks ago," Ed said.

  Cara gasped and screwed her eyes shut against the sudden, overwhelming sorrow. It hit like a physical blow, making her whole body shake. She had dismissed the memories as a fever dream because they were too horrible to be real, but now they came flooding back. Mom getting sick, but insisting on taking care of everyone else. Then the morning when Cara went to see why she wasn't awake yet. She remembered people holding her back while they took the body away, because she didn't want to let her go…

  No, no, no, she thought desperately. Just a dream, it's really just a dream, and Mom's going to be there waiting for me when I wake up. I can deal... with all of this as long as it's just a dream.

&n
bsp; She repeated it until she started to believe it. She built up the conviction that her mom was fine, and the world was fine, and that she was only sleeping, and the sorrow receded a bit. No more questioning, she told herself, feeling a little calmer again. It's all just a dream. Everything is fine, and in the morning I'll wake up and tell Mom all about it.

  "What do we do?" she heard Joey asking. "We can't just leave her alone again."

  Cara sighed, wiping at her face with a sleeve. In the meantime, she thought, I'll play it through. She pushed herself to her feet, though she swayed a little. Tears were still streaming down her face, and her nose was running, but she tried to ignore it.

  "What you do is you tell me where to get some cough medicine," she said firmly. "The pharmacy was out."

  ~~*~~