“We’ll see you in a little bit, Spence,” Carrie said, urging her son to get out.
“No, but seriously, why—”
“Spencer!” Jon said.
The kid laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Okay, fine. Bye.”
When their son left the room, shutting the door behind him, both Jon and Carrie laughed, kissing each other once more. Carrie then rolled over and took her phone off of the nightstand. She switched it off of silent and it immediately beeped at her. As she began swiping the screen, it beeped at her a few more times.
“Do you really have to keep all those notifications on?” Jon asked. “Why do you need to know every time someone likes one of your food pictures or selfies?”
Keeping her nose to the screen, Carrie didn’t respond. She continued to scroll, her eyes darting over the device. Another notification chimed. Jon sighed.
“Seriously, babe. Do you—”
“Look,” Carrie said, finally putting down the phone and grabbing the television remote. She clicked on the TV and navigated to a national news channel.
Two talking heads appeared on the screen, and the bottom third read, “Several dozen more cases of the mysterious virus confirmed in Africa. WHO warns of a potential outbreak.”
Jon watched the report for a minute before scoffing. “They’re just trying to get eyeballs on their channel. That’s the clickbait world we live in now.”
“I don’t know,” Carrie said, holding up her phone. “This seems pretty serious. It’s all over my news feed.”
“And something else will be all over it tomorrow. Probably some political blunder, sex scandal, or racist bullshit.” Jon sat up and leaned over to kiss his wife on the cheek. “Everything is going to be fine.”
But as he looked into his wife’s pale face, he could see that she wasn’t so sure.
Carrie wore a purple pendulum around her neck, which she often turned to for guidance. Jon had never understood it, and had picked on her about it early on. But it was important to her and, over time, Jon had quit messing with her about it. She pulled the necklace off now and held the pendulum over her open palm as she concentrated on it.
Jon watched her, feeling a little awkward. He knew she asked it questions and was likely doing that now. His curiosity got the best of him.
“What are you asking it?”
She hesitated, finally looking over at him. “If we’re going to be okay through all of this.”
Jon looked at the pendulum and noticed it was moving slightly. He smiled. “Well, that’s good that it’s moving. It’s bad if it doesn’t move at all, right?”
Her face was pale, making Jon’s smile disappear. “It always moves. If it moves front to back, that’s a good thing. But it’s moving side to side, which means it’s giving me a no. As in, no, we aren’t going to be alright through all of this.”
4
“Alright, you ugly bastards.”
Jon measured up the remaining two zombies as he stood over the battered corpses of their two friends.
Next to his right foot lay what had once been a man. It hadn’t been turned very long, and Jon could see he had been in his 50s when alive. Now, he had a split in the back of his head from Jon’s hatchet.
Several feet away to his left, a woman lay near a bush. The rotted skin and missing patches of hair on her head told Jon that she’d been dead for at least a year, probably longer. It had been harder for him to take down women at first. But when one had jumped out from a backroom in a general store Jon had been scavenging only a few months after society fell, Jon had quickly learned not to discriminate. It had been easy to drive his knife into this one’s temple.
He glanced back and forth between the remaining two, hatchet in hand and his knife on his waist, where it was easily accessible if he needed it.
“Which one of you wants it first?”
Both creatures had been men before being turned and looked like they could have been twins. The dead fucks all started to look alike after a while.
Jon grew tired of waiting.
He raised the hatchet over his head and drove it into the forehead of the thing on the left. The skull cracked and exploded, sending matter and blood all over, including onto Jon’s face. The hatchet lodged in the zombie’s face and didn’t immediately come out, so Jon kicked the other monster in the stomach, sending it flying back against a tree and then onto the ground. He then reached behind his head and grabbed the baseball bat.
The creature snarled and pushed itself up, its back against the tree. Jon waited, resting the bat on his shoulder and tensing his muscles as the zombie worked its way up to its feet.
When it finally stood, Jon aimed and reared back. He came forward already swinging the bat as hard as he could.
The wooden barrel connected with the zombie’s nose, right where Jon had aimed. The blow rocked the zombie’s head back against the tree, and the rotting corpse couldn’t take the impact. The head exploded, sending fluid everywhere as the body slumped down the tree to the ground.
Jon stepped over to the other zombie he had just slain. He kicked it in the shoulder to confirm it was dead, then squatted down and wedged the hatchet out of its head. He glanced around the area, observed his four kills, and decided that was enough for the day. He returned both the hatchet and the bat to his back.
Following his tracks back out of the trees, Jon arrived at his bike. Opening his saddlebag, he pulled out a towel and wiped his face. He then used it to clean off his blade. Looking at the old cloth, he decided it was beyond saving now. He tossed it onto the ground and drew in a deep breath as he looked around. With the adrenaline wearing off, his brain
