Waking Up Dead

“Of course I am. None of this is anyone’s fault. Just bad fucking luck.”

“The zombies are getting smarter,” Jackson said after as moment. “Maybe smart enough to realize the smell that puts them off is where the food is hiding?”

“Maybe.”

“Perhaps the virus is mutating?” she suggested, remembering a movie she’d watched long ago. “A different strain or something.”

“Or maybe the brain is fighting it?”

She shrugged. “We have no way to know.”

“We never do,” Luke said, his eyes still closed. “You know, I thought the bunker’d be safe forever. Hell, I slept in there when they were pounding on the ceiling. Smug I guess, in the knowledge that they couldn’t get in. How wrong was I?”

Jackson wrapped her arms around her knees. “We can’t go back there again.”

“No, we can’t. All those weapons, the food, the supplies…all useless now.”

“We’ll find other stuff,” she reassured him.

“It’s like the beginning all over again. I remember when—”

“There’s no point thinking about what we’ve lost,” she interrupted quickly, thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for him to be talking about it after all. Not if they were going down the early-days road again. Jackson hated remembering or discussing those times—with Tye she’d steered well clear of it. “Serious, Luke,” she said. “You’ll only make yourself depressed. It’s gone, all gone. We have to move forward.”

“I’ve been there for so long is all. It was the last fucking thing I had left.”

Guilt squirmed in her gut and Jackson shifted. Maybe she was being selfish; maybe spending so much time alone had left her that way? It was easier for her after all. She knew it was. The bunker had felt safe for maybe a half hour, if that. As soon as Luke had told her about the lock-turning, finger-poking dead guy that fleeting feeling of safety had gone. But Luke had lived there for well over a year by the sound of it. It was home to him. Giving that up was not going to be easy. Hadn’t they already lost so much?

“I know. I’m sorry, Luke,” she said softly.

“We have nothing, Jackson,” he said. “No supplies beyond those in the packs, and the few I have stashed.”

“We have the clothes on our backs don’t we? Full bellies for the moment, not to mention we’re both clean. We’re safe. We’ll do the only thing we can do, scavenge as we go.”

“I’d forgotten what it was like, before I found the bunker, I mean,” he sighed, dropping his head into his hands. “Living on whatever I could find, looking for somewhere to bed down every night. I remember when I stumbled on the gun shop. Jesus Christ, I nearly wept. That’s all gone now.”

“I know, Luke. I know.”

There was nothing she could say to make it better. Literally nothing. Luke was grieving and she knew a thing or two about that. She knew too, in that moment, that Luke had not yet managed to get to the place she had. Maybe because the bunker had shielded him from the necessity. But it was the place that you had to get to in order to stop jumping out of your skin at every creak or whisper. When you were in that place, when you lived it, you shook off such things as soon as they happened. The body was simply not capable of working properly under a continual feeling of despair or of supplying a constant stream of adrenaline. The only way to exist in the world of the dead was to accept something when it happened.

Accept and deal.

“I’m gonna change, Luke,” she said. “These sweats keep rolling down my hips. I thought they were gonna fall completely when we ran. Could you imagine? Me running as fast as possible with my pants around my ankles?

He laughed, just as she’d wanted him to. “It might even have made the zombies pause.”

She pulled off her backpack and took out the clothes inside. “In shock, perhaps? Do you want this extra sweater?”

“No. You use it as a blanket.”

“You’ll freeze.”

“I just need to sleep. I’m so fucking tired I don’t care if a horde of them comes through the door.”

Not even bothering to ask him to close his eyes, what with them already being shut, Jackson stripped out of the baggy clothes and slithered into the new ones, pink socks and all. Like in the pool room, dizziness assailed her when she bent down. She needed sleep too.

Once she was dressed, with the bright green socks folded in her pack, she sat back down next to Luke and draped the heavy sweater across their torsos, followed by the sweatpants across their legs. “Warmth is warmth,” she said.

“Yeah.”

He sounded so depressed, and it was so freaking cold. Jackson sighed and wiggled her toes, encouraging the blood flow. She’d been colder of course. She’d always been more something, and that thought tended to put things into perspective.

“You know once I was trapped in this little town, somewhere on the outskirts of Pennsylvania,” she said slowly, toes still wiggling. “Though it might have been Ohio—did I mention geography is not my strong point?”

“You did.”

“Well the zombies were holed up at the only clear way out of the place. I’m guessing the residents had tried to run and it was just a mess. I lost days trying to scout another route out, but there wasn’t one.”

He lifted his head, distracted, just as she’d wanted him to be, even though he kept his eyes firmly shut. “What did you do?”

“There was at least one pack of them, and the space was so tight I knew if they got me, I’d be a goner. There was only one option, and I still can’t believe it worked. Basically I walked the river bed, weighed down by stones, a plastic tube for my air.”

“Fucking hell…”

“I was so lucky it was a thin river, not too deep either. When I got to the other side I rolled myself in mud and had to creep up the bank so they didn’t spot me. I’m sure I looked like I’d stepped out of a horror movie.”

“That is pretty damn amazing, Jackson.”

“It was pretty cool,” she said shooting him a smile. And it was, though she hadn’t thought much about it at the time, beyond being ridiculously grateful she’d made it out and pumping herself full of antibiotics to combat the ear infections, but several days later she’d just sat in shock. Almost unable to believe she’d done it. It was one of so many weird plans that really shouldn’t have worked but somehow did. So many that she’d never have believed herself capable of just a couple of years ago.

“It takes on a new view now, though,” she said, almost to herself.

“In what way?”

She shrugged. “I can’t help but wonder if they were waiting purposefully. To catch anyone trying to leave town. If they knew somehow that that was the only way out.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Luke said shifting his position a little. “They just found an impenetrable bunker, so if you tell me you spotted some on the moon I’d believe you.”

The shift gave her a little room to sink into him. The spot right where their bodies touched was wonderfully warm and Jackson leaned in a little farther.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m cold.”

“You and me both.”

“Not to be a pervert…” She paused for a moment before she said the next words, knowing in some way that they were going to set a sort of precedent between her and Luke but knowing too, that right now he needed it as much as she did, the warmth between them already was proof of that. “We’d be warmer if we cuddled up.”

Finally, Luke snapped his eyes open and looked at her. He was so tired; she could see the heaviness in his eyes and the strain around his mouth. Her own eyes pulled, almost in sympathy. She’d be getting out the toothpicks soon.

“Serious?” he asked.