About a Girl: Part 8, by J. D. Allen

I looked over at her then, actually noticing her for the first time since the roadblock. Her legs were curled up against her chest, her arms wrapped around them, reminding me of a child hiding in the corner of a closet. A slow stream of tears fell down her cheeks as she struggled to hold back sobs. It seemed as though she was at much at war withing herself as I was. I could feel my heart sinking in my chest: there had to be something I could do to reach her. There had to be something I could do to help her; to pull her out of the battle she was fighting.

I watched as my hand seemed to move of its own volition. When it came to rest came to rest on her shoulder, she flinched. A moment later, her crying shifted. Before, it had sounded hopeless and lost. Now, her sobs were more violent, and it seemed as if there was anger in her tears. She turned and looked at me and her eyes didn't look hopeless. They looked upset. I tried to make sense of her expression and the only thing that came to mind was a statue I'd seen years before. It was a statue of an angel with a child's broken body in its arms, built in memory of a bombing or a shooting or something. I remember thinking that its eyes weren't downcast, looking upon the child. Instead, it seemed that they were fixed on me. It's face had grief written across it, but its eyes seemed angry: the angel was crying out for justice. Suddenly, the look on Charlotte's face made sense. It made sense because I felt it, too.

Her sobs lost some of their force and she began to speak, as if she were trying to explain something. I think she had to give it words as much to help in her own understanding as to help me understand. She struggled to find the words a first, but it didn't take long for her to gain momentum. She spoke passionately, saying things weren't supposed to be like this. Everything was wrong. Before the outbreak, there had been good things and bad things, but the world worked. Everything seemed to fit together and things made sense. Now, everything was broken. Everything was so broken, it was hard to even remember what normal was. It used to be that when something seemed wrong or broken, you could fix it. You might have to work hard to make things right, but you could fix things. But now, everyone was dead. The things that used to matter were gone and nothing made sense anymore. It was all...broken. 

I realized that our struggles were the same. We felt things differently because we were different people, but we suffered from the same wound. What she had said resonated with me. It brought clarity. Some things that I'd struggled with suddenly made sense. I could feel the sadness she felt and I felt the tears begin to form. It felt like that sadness was moving through my body, slowly spreading from somewhere in my gut. It seemed to sting at first, but as it continued to spread, it eased the hurting I felt. It cut the sharpness of the pain I was feeling and left a dull ache in its wake.

I thought about California and realized that I had a new perspective. California wasn't just a place to go because I had nothing better to do; it was a chance to fight against the brokenness. It was a chance to create a new normal. Things could never go back to the way they had been before. That world was lost, but in California, they were fighting so they might at least hold on to some of it. It was just a chance, but it was a chance that was worth risking everything for. To some degree, I'd always known this, but now it was more than some indistinguishable feeling: it was an idea. Now there was a different kind of urgency in getting to California. It felt less like I was running away from something and more like California was a place to run to.

As we put more and more distance between us and the barricade, more and more thoughts danced around in my head. One thing that came to mind was how much Charlotte and I had in common. We were so dissimilar in so many ways, but in what we were going through we were the same. We fought the same battle. Up until now, we'd fought that battle alone. Now we stood shoulder to shoulder. We were comrades. Now, our futures were intertwined. Getting to California meant saving her from the fate that I feared for myself. I felt a shift in my thinking as my hopes for the future began to matter less and whatever it was she was fighting for began to matter more. I wanted to protect her and to protect her future. 

After driving for a while with so many thoughts bouncing around in my head, I just needed to stop. I needed to try to make sense of some of it before my head exploded. I pulled over at some sort of scenic overlook letting her know I needed a break. I just needed to think. I sat down near the edge of the bluff and tried to make sense of my thoughts: to organize then in some way so they all fit together. Soon, Charlotte came and sat near the bluff’s edge. I decided to try to explain why California was important. California meant more than a bed and food and walls and people. Everything had just sort of clicked together when she'd been talking earlier. Before I’d been too angry to really be sad or to mourn. My response to the brokenness had been rage. In a way, it felt like I should somehow be fixing it, but the more I saw that I couldn’t, the angrier I got until it almost consumed me. But now, I finally felt the sadness. It seemed to quiet the rage. I wasn’t so angry anymore. And now California was a place of hope. We just had to make it there and help in whatever way we could. It was the most important thing we could do with our lives. There was nothing else more important. 

We sat and talked and enjoyed the view until the sun started to disappear behind the foothills. As it descended, the light streamed through the hilltops and shadow slowly transformed the simple hills into something more. It was magnificent. I hardly dared breathe or talk as I watched nature at its best. As the moment started to fade, I drifted out of my reverie and found myself wishing I had a camera, even if to just catch the end of what happened. I must have been wishing out loud because Charlotte got up and went back to the Juggernaut and pulled a camera out of the bottom of her bag. She came back to the edge of the bluff, hesitating before handing it to me. I stared at it for a moment. What I was holding in my hands was more than just a camera: it was the only thing that remained of her friend. 

It was with a sense of purpose that I held the camera up and captured the setting sun. Now the moment would last forever. It was time to stop running from the past. It was time to start making new memories. If I wasn’t running away anymore, it was time to start living in this new world…or at least in the hope of a new world. Something about that thought just felt right, and, while caught up in the moment, I insisted that Charlotte and I take a picture together there on that spot. It seems childish or strange to me now, but at the time it seemed incredibly important. We needed to document that we were there. It was a turning point for me, and it was important that it was recorded somehow.

We spent the night at that overlook. I spent the first few hours of darkness looking up at the stars and considering the future. I felt at peace. Now that there was hope for the future, I could look at it with new eyes. Before that day, the hope of a world beyond the zombie apocalypse was a distant hope. It had felt like a ridiculous thing to put my hope in—like believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. It had been as though I had to force myself to believe. I had to convince myself that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Now I didn’t just hope. I knew there was a world beyond the apocalypse. I could feel it. Hope was growing in my chest like a flame. I could feel it blazing within me and I basked in its warmth. We were at the threshold of a new world. I held onto that thought as I went to bed. Sleep came quickly that night. 

I slept through the sunrise the next morning. I found myself wishing that I had seen it. It was the dawn of more than a new day. Something inside of me had changed. We headed out and our trip brought us through foothills and mountains and wilderness. As we drove and talked, it felt as though I was beginning to heal. Apart from stopping at gas stations for supplies and having to clear fallen trees and rocks from the road, the next few days were uneventful. We just talked and laughed and listened to music. We just enjoyed the trip. It was such a welcome change after feeling lost and alone for so long. 

We came out of the wilderness into seemingly endless grasslands. Travel was faster here; there was nothing blocking the road except for an occasional abandoned vehicle. Once or twice we came across cars that had collided or gone off the road. It was easy to picture what had happened, but it didn’t affect me as it had before. I felt sadness and an uncomfortable stirring within me, but the feeling passed whenever the wreckage was out of sight. 

The worst sight in the grasslands was a small town that had been destroyed by a derailed train. We stopped on a hill overlooking the town, documenting it with the camera and trying to piece together what had happened. It seemed to me that a vehicle must have stopped on the tracks and gotten hit by the train. The impact had knocked the train off of its tracks. Houses and shops had been flattened by train cars. Much of what hadn’t been flattened had burned. In spite of how violent the destruction must have been, it looked so quiet now. Rain had fallen many times since the train wreck and it was washing away the signs of the town’s wounds. Grass had begun to grow, masking the scars with shades of green. 

It almost seemed wrong to take pictures of the town, like we should just let it rest in peace. We had agreed, though, that it wasn’t likely that anyone would ever again see this town. It might just fade back into the grasslands before people ever came this way again. Without pictures, the town would fade from memory, becoming just a dot on maps. Many other towns were already on their way there. This was not the only town of its kind. Such thoughts make me sad even now. Yet, there was something hauntingly beautiful about the town because it would soon be nothing more than a memory. 

We left the town as the sun set, turning our eyes and thoughts once again to California. We cased the sun westward until it sank below the horizon. The next few days passed uneventfully. We drove. We refueled. We scavenged for supplies. We didn’t see a single zombie and it felt like we had left danger behind. Even so, I kept my swords on my back each time we left the Juggernaut. I really didn’t think anything of it at the time. I’d carried them with me ever since I’d gotten them. When I had them with me, I was safe. When I didn’t, I wasn’t. It was as simple as that. But Charlotte brought it up as we were driving. 

She said it was stupid. You see a zombie and you just run, it’s as easy as that. Swords were dangerous. They were almost as bad as guns. Was I after some kind of vengeance against the zombies? Was I some kind of bloodlust that drove me to fight them? Did I think I was some kind of superhero? I was caught off-guard. In a way, the question about vengeance was right. It hadn’t started like that, though. It had been about protecting what I cared about. It had always been about protecting what I cared about. The only time it had been about anything else was when I didn’t have anything left that I did care about. I had wanted vengeance. I did want them to pay. I wanted to keep tearing them apart until there were none left. But was it really just about vengeance? That didn’t seem right. It was about trying to make the world right again. The zombies had brought death and destruction. They had to be stopped. It felt like it was a war between them and us. 

I didn’t think I could explain all that to her though. The way she said it, it sounded like the swords made her feel unsafe. It sounded like she was worried I’d go crazy and just start hacking everything in sight. I could understand where she was coming from. If she hadn’t seen me fighting the zombies, she had at least seen the aftermath. How could I explain that I had it under control now? As long as she was with me, I wouldn’t go back to being that person. I just couldn’t put it into words. Since I couldn’t say the things I wanted to say, I just told her that I needed them with me in order to feel safe. They had kept me safe so far. I would keep them with me until we were safely in California. Then maybe I wouldn’t need them anymore. It wasn’t a lie. I’m not sure I would call it the truth, though. She accepted my answer without an argument, but I could feel a space growing between us. I think she had wanted me to put them away and just act like a normal human being. But I couldn’t do that. I wished she could understand.

About a Girl: Part 7, by J. D. Allen

The sun was well above the horizon when I woke the next morning. At first, I sat wondering what had happened. Usually, I would wake when the sun began to rise. Then I remembered the events of the day before. I looked at the passenger seat, but she wasn't there. Panic struck for a second before I saw her sitting on the hood of the Juggernaut. She sat with her feet pulled up on the hood and her arms wrapped around her knees. She seemed so peaceful sitting there. I couldn't help but watch her for a moment before getting out to talk with her. 

As I closed the car door, she looked over and smiled at me. She'd been awake for a little while but hadn't wanted to wake me, so she'd gone outside. The building she'd been holed up in had been the only safe place she'd been since the outbreak. Even then, she'd always felt like there might be some new danger lurking around every corner. Yet, here, in the wide open nowhere, it actually felt safe.

As I listened to her talk, I climbed onto the hood next to her and surveyed the landscape. The empty freeway stretched out before us and in the distance, I could see an enormous bridge that stretched across some important river. A quiet little town blanketed the hillside that sat on the opposite side of the river. There were also some scattered farmhouses and fence lines that looked like they came from a different era. Everything around us looked like it belonged. There was no sign of the plague: no crashed cars, no corpses, and no maddened scavengers. It was beautiful. I hadn't really noticed the scenery as I made my way westward. My only thought had been to get to California. I told Charlotte as much. We sat there for a long while and talked, enjoying the landscape and the sense of peace it held.

As the morning sun rose higher, it got warmer and we started driving once again. When we drove onto the bridge, Charlotte rolled down her window and stuck out her hand. It danced through the wind like a bird in flight. As her hand danced, I looked at her face. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling. She looked so free in that moment; as if she wasn't actually sitting in the seat next to me, but was instead gliding through the air, a hundred feet off the ground. It was captivating. I wanted to stay in that moment. I wanted the way it felt to last all the way to California. 

We reached the end of the bridge and meandered up the hill on the other side. The highway we were on zigzagged up the hill and through the town. As we turned back and forth, we were granted views of the river valley. The sun was nearly overhead and its light made the surface of the river seem to shimmer. I was sad to leave the sight behind as we crested the hill. I turned my head for a final look. Then Charlotte gasped.

The town we'd just driven through didn't end at the crest of the hill. At least, it hadn't. Now the town on this side of the hill was in ruins. A fire had destroyed most of the buildings along Main Street and seemed to have skipped around through the rest of the town. As we drove through the wreckage, birds flew out from in front of us. There were also a few wild dogs that ran through the streets as we approached. I took little notice of them, my attention instead being drawn mostly to the destruction of the town itself. The town, with its patchwork destruction, left me feeling as if a shadow of death was lingering over the place, like a cloud passing over a landscape creates a shadow that rests on some areas while leaving others untouched. The comparison made my skin crawl. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

I guided the Juggernaut through the wreckage as quickly as I could. Main street was clear up until where the city hall had stood. There, the shadow of death was thickest. The old building had toppled into the street. We drove onto a side street to get around the fallen giant. The ruined part of the town was oppressive with its skeletal structures, carrion feeders and wild dogs, but the town was soon behind us and the oppressive feeling began to subside. 

I'd pretty much ignored Charlotte as we'd driven through the town, but now I turned to look at her. Her already pale face was drained of color and her eyes looked haunted again. She'd drawn her legs up into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. It reminded me of a child hiding in the corner of a closet when something bad had happened. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead. Whatever fleeting sense of happiness we'd felt this morning felt as if it had been ripped away; its warmth stolen by the chill that lingered in the ruins. 

I pulled into a gas station once the town was far behind us. I hated to stop, but we needed fuel, as well as some food. I grabbed my swords and waited a moment before hopping out of the Juggernaut. The place seemed safe, but it still felt eerie. We filled up the Juggernaut and scrounged around for food that hadn't yet expired. Charlotte moved around like a frightened rabbit and I felt like my heart was slowly climbing up my throat. My hands were always jumping to my swords. Every noise seemed out of place: the wind, birds, the crinkling of packaged food being pulled off shelves. Every noise that broke the silence made me want to jump. The silence itself made me nervous, as if something bad was about to happen. The fear and dread rested heavily on me until we were back in the Juggernaut and headed down the road again. 

There was some normal looking country for a while. It wasn't beautiful, like the river valley, but it made it easier to pretend that we were on a normal road trip. It was an impossible delusion to sustain, but there were moments when I was able to forget. There were moments when Charlotte was an old friend. There were moments where it felt like we were on vacation. It didn't last long, though. After only a few hours, something out of the ordinary loomed on the horizon. 

As we got closer, I began to recognize Humvees and military trucks. It looked as though they had blocked off the road to turn back traffic. I can only assume they were trying to quarantine an area. Their efforts had failed.  The place looked like a war zone.  Some of the civilian vehicles were peppered with bullet holes.  Some had caught on fire and become burned out shells.  Corpses were scattered around the blockade and amid civilian and military vehicles. As we drove off the road and around the blockade, I saw some zombies lurking around the vehicles. Some were in civilian clothes. Others were in military dress. It was then that I felt the madness lurking beneath the surface. 

At first, it was just a feeling that rested somewhere in my gut. The feeling grew. It clawed at the edges of the calm I held on to. I tried to focus on driving. I tried to focus on California, but still the unrest grew. Soon, I was at war within myself: a war that I was steadily losing. The day before, I would have gotten out and found something to kill. I would have torn through the undead ranks like a maddened berserker. But not this time. I could win this fight. The unrest and anger advanced on my thinking mind. I knew what would happen if they took control. I fought back with rage. I would not sit back and be a whimpering victim. I wouldn't hand my mind over to the madness inside me.

Soon, the war between my rage and the madness was the only thing left in my thoughts. The wheels of the Juggernaut kept rolling, but they were guided more by instinct than any conscious thought. In spite of the amount of will that was pouring into my rage, I was steadily losing ground. Though the battlefield was within my mind, its fires seemed to spread through my body. My whole being felt as if the fires of the madness sought to consume it. I felt a fear growing within me. I was going to lose this fight. I knew there was no way I could keep the madness at bay. Yet, I kept struggling against it. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew there was a reason I couldn't give up. I knew there was a reason for fighting that was larger than myself. I tried desperately to remember what that reason was.

Something cut through the madness and the rage, then. It came upon me like a blast of cold wind, just as I felt I couldn't hold onto my sanity any longer. My mind focused on it and I tried to trace it to its source. The cold wind swept across the madness and the fire within me shrank back. I regained some of myself as the cold wind blew, and it was then that I remembered why I couldn't give up. It was then that I remembered Charlotte in the seat next to mine. The cold wind that had turned the tide was the sound of her crying.

About a Girl: Part 6, by J. D. Allen

I got out and helped her put her things in the SUV. She nodded when I asked her if that was everything. When I asked her if there was anyone else in the building, she hesitated for a moment and then shook her head. I looked at the building. How many people had lived there before the outbreak? Now, it was only one. Soon, no one would. I tried not to think about it. Today was too good a day to think about it, so I started driving. 

She was very quiet at first. She seemed afraid. I was quiet, too. I was nervous. The quiet was awkward, but I didn't want to turn the music on. I was almost entirely concentrated on her presence. The sound of her breathing carried peace with it. Her every move carried grace in it. It was like the branches of a willow swaying in the breeze, a doe lifting her head at a stranger's approach, or a cat walking along a rail the way we walk down a sidewalk. And the way she smelled was like...for some reason, it made me feel like the world wasn't the unforgiving hell I thought it was. With all of this to take in, music would have just been distracting noise. But, eventually the stillness and quiet, along with my own curiosity, came to be too much. 

I asked her how long she'd been alone. I wondered if she'd been alone as long as I had. I wondered what toll it had taken. I wondered a bit more in the moment it took her to respond. I wished I hadn't asked when she started to answer. 

She told me about a friend of hers who was immune as well. They'd found the fortified apartment building a week or so after the outbreak had hit the city. There were other people alive in there at that time. Everyone moved around like they were ghosts. Some people wore gloves and gas masks. Everyone was afraid. Slowly, the people just started disappearing. Finally, she and her friend were alone in the fortress with little to do except scrounge for food and refuel the generator. They found different ways to fill the long hours. Her friend had a camera and took pictures of the city. She said that if people survived, they'd want to remember. They'd want to know what happened. So she took hundreds upon hundreds of pictures of the city and its undead inhabitants. She had some close scrapes with the zombies, but learned pretty quickly how to sneak around and go unnoticed.

Her friend slipped in and out of the building, taking pictures. Charlotte stayed inside, working with a computer. She'd established a network of communication with other survivors. She said there were pockets of survivors scattered across the country and even more on other continents, where they'd had more time to respond to the plague before it reached their doors. She had been working with others in an effort to establish a reliable network to share ideas and information. It was brilliant, really. My hopes rose when I realized there were people from all over, working together to facilitate recovery. I wondered how much more was being done that I was unaware of. 

She continued on with her story and I realized the telling of it was painful. She continued on anyway. Her friend became like a ghost. She would come in from taking her pictures looking more haunted each day. Charlotte would share with her the progress they were making to collaborate ideas and network. Her friend would just nod and give a smile that looked like it pained her. The two grew more and more distant. Each became more and more focused on their project. Then, one day, her friend didn't come back. Charlotte was a bit concerned, but didn't begin to panic until she saw her camera sitting on the table between their beds. Then the panic set in. It must have been there since morning, when she had left. Charlotte had been so busy with her own routine that she hadn't been paying attention. 

There was a neatly written note folded beneath the camera. It explained what her friend had done and why. It apologized for the pain it would cause. Her friend had jumped off the building because living with everything she'd seen and felt had become too much to bear.

The sobs Charlotte had been holding back became too much when she reached this point in her story. She was in agony. I slowed to a stop, pulling over onto the side of the road. I reached out to her, putting my hand on her shoulder, wishing there was something I could do: some way I could make it go away. She leaned into me, burying her head in my chest. I put my arm around her as unrestrained sobs shook her whole body. She'd fought to maintain control for so long; fought to survive. Now she was finally able to let loose the pain that had been welling up inside her. She sobbed until her eyes ran dry and she was exhausted. All I could do was hold her, and maybe that comforted her some.  She fell asleep and I laid her back in her seat, wondering how long it'd been since she'd slept so soundly. Then I pulled back onto the road, thinking about her story, silently crying tears of my own. 

I managed to drive a few hours more before I needed to sleep. It was probably the first time on the trip that I drove with no music playing. The only sounds I heard were the noise of the tires on the pavement and Charlotte's slow breaths from the seat beside me. I felt calm. I nearly swerved off the road from the shock of the realization: I felt calm. It had been hours since my last massacre, and the madness wasn't even looming over me. I felt a lot of tension disappear as I relaxed further. Then I felt very tired. I pulled over to the side of the road and nodded off almost immediately.

About a Girl: Part 5, by J. D. Allen

Over the next few days, I continued to fight the madness. I stopped for supplies along the way, but I never stopped for long. I hit two cities along the way and stopped to kill some zombies in each. It was stupid, but it was the only release I had from the battle against the madness. It was like scratching an itch: it didn't solve the problem, but it did make it go away for at least a little bit. To me, it was worth it. It made the suffering more bearable. It got me closer to California.  As long as I kept going, it was worth it.  My only thought was making it to California. 

Another day passed and I found myself in another city. I had thought of bypassing it, but the pain was too great. The battle against the madness was making me feel sick. Even though I maintained control, I began to act like some sort of crazy person.  I needed some sort of release from the madness I fought.  That morning, I'd gone far enough that I cut my arm, just so I could focus on something apart from the madness. I'm not proud of it, but it seemed to help a little. So I chose to go to the city. 

The city was much like the others. The people were dead and zombies, crows, and vultures all feasted on their corpses. This city had died more recently than the others. I could tell by the state of the bodies. I drove to a sort of mall in the middle of the city where there was a fountain and benches and room to see the zombies coming from a long way off. I had driven through the city with my windows down and music throbbing, but I turned the music even louder when I stopped.   I climbed onto the roof of the Juggernaut, my drawn swords gleaming in the sunlight. 

Above me, vultures circled. Crows sat on light posts, watching me with their evil eyes. Zombies came from every direction. At first, most just ambled my way, but when they saw me on the car, they picked up the pace, shifting into the ambling run they do. I stood on the roof and smiled. The undead crawled over the city like a plague of insects, but I was death. I would outlast them. In the end, death would win out: so that life would prevail. I laughed.

Jumping down from the car, I began to tear into the zombies. There were enough that I didn't draw out the kills. I worked efficiently, severing spines and watching heads fall. The courtyard was a nearly perfect place to wage my personal war against the undead. The terrain was varied enough that there was always something I could use to my advantage. Zombies stumbled and I swung. They funneled in and I hacked away. They crowded and I danced away to a new position. The day wasn't hot, but I was soon feeling sweat slide down my face. It mixed with zombie ooze and approached my eyes. I pressed on. The courtyard was still filled with zombies.

It became tedious, dispatching the endless sea of undead. Their corpses littered the courtyard, but still more came. My arms were on fire, but the courtyard was still a battlefield. Eventually, there was an end to the flow of zombies. The number in the courtyard began to drop by measurable amounts. I finished off the last of the zombies and started to relax. My body ached and several scratches were already burning, but the rush still felt good. It felt like my anxiety, my fear, and my anger had been blasted away by the focus and demand of the task. I climbed up on the fountain and surveyed my handiwork. It was magnificent. I sat down on the lip of the fountain's basin and basked in the warmth of the raw emotion, and in the light of the afternoon sun as it slowly fell behind the tall buildings. 

As shadows descended on the courtyard, I got ready to leave the city. I dropped down from the fountain and something caught my eye down one of the streets: a flicker of movement. There were birds flying around and squabbling everywhere, but this movement registered differently. I started down the street, swords drawn again, scanning for movement. A zombie bolted from behind a bus shelter, running away like the devil himself was at its heals. I considered pursuing it and cutting it down, but then I realized something important: zombies don't run away. It was a human.

I shouted something at it as it ran. I don't remember what. I was in shock. I shouted again and it slowed to a stop in the middle of the street. It slowly turned around and I saw its face. It was a girl. It...she...was beautiful.

I started walking toward her, slowly. She seemed uncertain, as if considering whether or not to bolt again. I realized I still had my swords drawn and sheathed them once again. That seemed to calm her some. By now, she was facing me, standing in the middle of the street, shifting from one foot to another, still seeming uneasy. I looked very closely at her as I approached, still have trouble believing. She was a redhead, her hair seeming somewhere between orange and red. She wore a faded yellow, close-fitting t-shirt that ended below her hips and a pair of black leggings. She had no jewelry and her skin was so fair that it seemed to glow in the fading light. On her feet were running shoes. I probably wouldn't have noticed except that they were so different from the rest of her outfit. I think I smirked.

As I got close, I got a good look at her face. Her eyes were green. They seemed to be clouded by worry. Dark bags beneath them showed she didn't sleep much. But she was still beautiful. Her cheeks were a little sunken, making her mouth look larger than it was. There was something about her mouth... My eyes jumped between her eyes and her mouth. Then they jumped to her nose, her ear, and back to her eyes. It seemed stupid, but I didn't seem to know what to focus on. I finally settled on her eyes, but they were so intense. It was difficult for me to look into them. 

I stopped a few feet from her. Now what? What do you do when you meet someone? Somewhere, deep in my memory, the information resurfaced. I stuck out my hand. She flinched, but then reached out her hand and grasped mine. We shook hands. A smile spread across her face and, in that moment, I felt like everything was going to be okay.

We made our introductions. She said her name was Charlotte. It was strange to finally hold a conversation after so many weeks in complete isolation. Translating my thoughts into words and sentences took a bit of effort. I'd certainly talked to myself in that time--on many occasions--but that was different. I told her where I'd come from and where I was going. I told her about California, but she already knew. She asked to come with. I was excited: thrilled, actually. I'd never expected to run into anyone on my way to California. There were so few people left. What were the odds? And the odds that it was someone like her...I was blown I away. I could hardly put my thoughts into words. I tried not to let it show, but it felt like the world had been painted in shades of gray, but was now awash with color. 

She told me how to get to her hideout and then went to get her things. I ran to get my SUV. A few more zombies had shown up, so I dispatched them: no big deal. I changed out of my blood-soaked clothes and did what I could to clean off my face and arms. A shower would have been great, but I was in a hurry. 

I got to her hideout just before she came out. I studied it as I waited, and it seemed like it had been an upscale apartment building before the apocalypse.  It had been barricaded at some point after the outbreak: the windows on the first floor were covered with several layers of plywood and the doorway, which had once probably had nice pane glass windows and doors, was now buried beneath layers of boards. It made me think of a castle gate. It was an interesting image, watching her force her way out of the castle door, her possessions in tow. She didn't have much. She seemed so out of place next to the fortress, and next to the skeleton of a city. Next to the city in its present state, she seemed like a ghost: like a memory of the world that was, walking through the world that is. She was a spark of hope. She was a reminder that all was not yet lost. She was a reminder that there was still some beauty left in the world.

About a Girl: Part 4, by J. D. Allen

The next day, I couldn't turn the music loud enough or drive fast enough to get pulled away from the memory of the day before. What had happened? It was like some madness had taken over me: some sort of insanity. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe I was losing control. The control that I once had definitely seemed to be slipping away. I couldn't control my thoughts anymore. My emotions were going haywire. A destructive blend of emotions that was slowly tightening its grasp on me. I couldn't isolate them and deal with each individually. I could feel anger, disgust, regret, guilt sorrow....but whenever I tried to confront any of them, they simply faded back into the growing maelstrom that was taking hold of me. I was losing it. 

I found myself desperately yearning to feel anything but that horrifying madness. I couldn't smother it with apathy; the sickness blazed on, affected only for a few fleeting moments. Memories I'd held back for weeks flashed through my mind with no restraint. They couldn't be stopped. The emotion and the images blended into a hellish twilight I couldn't escape. I wanted it to end. I just wanted it to end.

After two more days on the road, another small city loomed on the horizon. I'd passed by or through at least a dozen towns, but they had seemed abandoned: unlike the earlier city, which had seemed haunted. The difference was as striking as that between a half-buried skeleton and a walking corpse. Now another skyline lay ahead of me. I suppose I had an option. I could have driven around it. I could have avoided the situation entirely. With everything else that was running through my head, though, I don't think the option even registered.

Within the hour, I was driving through the city. The highway had been stopped up with car wrecks. Panic and destruction had overtaken this city as well. The city streets were more passable than the highway had been, but it was still slow going and there were more places where the undead might be lurking. There definitely were undead around. I saw a few as I was driving, but I didn't stop to pick them off. I was focused on navigating my way through that hellhole. Before long though, I hit an impassible field of gridlocked cars. 

I turned around to start backtracking through the streets, but before I'd even gotten the Juggernaut turned all the way around I saw a lot of zombies coming towards me. I didn't bother counting, but it was more than a little and less than a hundred: in other words, a lot. In hindsight, I suppose I could have gunned it and plowed my way through them, but it would have been risky. I probably would have been able to pull it off, but again, with everything that was going through my head, I don't think it even registered in my awareness.

I was out of the SUV before I had even fully processed what I was planning to do. It didn't matter. They were coming. I was ready. I shut the Juggernaut down and grabbed my swords. This time, I waited for them. I swung my arms around, limbering them up as the zombies advanced. I should have been afraid. Recalling the event, I've tried to find fear in the blend of emotions I felt that night, but I don't even recall a glimmer of it. Instead, all I remember is the rising tide of rage that swallowed all other emotion. It became a wall between me and the madness. It felt good. 

My blades sang and my footfalls set the cadence. The zombies provided a chorus of droning moans. The combat was like some sort of orchestral movement and I was the conductor. My instruments of destruction swung this way and that. I felt removed from their dance behind my wall of rage. My body moved with the music as well, dancing along in its own way. The zombies dropped to the ground like the conductors hands at each downbeat. It was the music of my madness: the composition of my rage. I was relentless and unafraid. Nothing could shake me so long as the music continued, but the music was over all too quickly. I looked around for more zombies to join the song, but they all lay on the street like black notes on a page: dead and unmoving.

The sense of rage left me in a long, shuddering sigh and a sense of quiet euphoria took its place. It lasted for a while: long enough to clean up in the river that ran through the city and long enough for me to drive through the remainder of the city's dark streets and finally fall asleep under the open sky some hour removed from the buildings and wreckage. At last, something held the madness at bay. I slept peacefully that night. 

The madness crept back in with the morning light. The anger, the dread, the grief—they spread through my veins as the dawn spread across the sky. There was no real escape, it seemed. I could live with it. I could survive. I just had to get to California. California was the land of promise. There was hope there. There was a chance to start over. There the streets were made of gold and food fell from the sky like rain. I was going to make it. I had to. 

I started the engine and pulled back onto the highway. It was still a long way to California. Somehow, I had to cover the distance quickly, with enough food and water and gas. If I balanced out the variables, I could maximize efficiency and...and...I had to keep thinking. I had to keep my brain going. This madness had already taken hold of my idle thoughts and was trying to take control of the rest of my mind as well. I had to keep my brain working. If I didn't, it would all spiral out of control again. I was afraid of what would happen then. I didn't know what would happen then. Maybe I'd be able to take back control if I lost it, but I didn't know. My greatest concern, though, was that—if I lost control—I might become suicidal. That would be such a waste. I'd gotten this far. I couldn't give up now. It would be an absolute and complete waste. The past few months of grief and pain would be for nothing. The last few days of agony would be completely wasted. It had to be for something. I couldn't give up. I pushed the gas pedal down even farther and flew down the highway.

About a Girl: Part 3, by J. D. Allen

I was on the road a day later. I had packed up an SUV with supplies for the trip: food, extra gas cans, guns, and a few other implements of destruction. The SUV had belonged to some big-shot lawyer whose kids I'd gone to school with. I suppose you could say I stole it, but I figured that, since he was rotting in a shallow grave behind his house, he didn't need it anymore. I named the SUV 'Juggernaut'. It seemed like a good name. The thing was huge and I hoped that nothing could stop it on the pilgrimage to California. 

I was excited when I got on the freeway and watched my town disappear behind me. Finally, I was doing something. I was moving forward. I had my music on and it felt like a road-trip: much like driving to college for a new semester. I had my music playing and had pleasant thoughts about the future. But soon I came to a city, and the pleasant thoughts and the excitement were swept away. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. Fires had swept through the city. Evidence of their passing was marked by the charred skeletons of buildings that had once been the city's downtown. Cars were everywhere. Some sat abandoned in the middle of the street; grave markers of the innocent and testaments to the panic that had gripped the city. Others had crashed into buildings, light posts, other cars, or whatever else was in their way as the drivers were taken by the plague. The cars and burned-out buildings told a story of the city's slow demise, as if it had been the one stricken by disease. The city seemed a corpse, but the zombies and the crows gave it a sense of animation, like a macabre puppet dancing on unseen strings. Then it hit me with a wave of nausea that momentarily blocked out my vision: the city itself was undead.

I hesitate to do so, but it seems necessary to give an account of the bodies that littered the haunted city. Here the dead had been left to rot where they fell. Bodies of different ages, sizes, and states of decay could be found everywhere. I tried to look away, but each time I shifted my gaze, they fell upon some new horror. Some of the corpses were simply dead: bloated carcasses with their throats torn open and black pools of dried blood wreathing their contorted faces like dark halos. These were the more pleasant to look at. The rest had been torn apart and left in varying states of dissection. 

My eyes turned away from these to the armies of crows that filled the sky and swarmed the streets. It seemed that, every moment that they weren't squabbling amongst themselves or flying away from some threat, they were tearing away at the rotting flesh of human carcasses. The birds themselves looked sick, as though the plague that had afflicted the corpses was slowly affecting the birds as well. There was a madness in their black eyes that made this seem entirely plausible. Taking in the crows as they swarmed around, tearing at the bodies, I remembered what they were. They were a murder: a murder of crows. I shuddered. I felt an emotion I'd never felt before, and though it was new to me, I knew it's name in an instant. It was terror.

 

I drove through the city as quickly as I could and didn't look back. When I got enough distance from it, I pulled over at the side of the road. I had my music blasting in hopes that I could somehow drown out my thoughts. Still, I found myself shaking and jumping at the sight of every passing bird. I don't know how long I sat there trying to fight off the terror. I tried to slow my breathing and calm my racing heart, but nothing I did seemed to help. Finally, I felt a shift, and the terror was eaten by rage.

It was the zombies' fault. Everything was their fault; all of it. I turned the Juggernaut around. I rolled down my windows and cranked the music even louder. Death Metal seemed an appropriate choice. Once I reached the city, I tore through the streets.  I gave no attention to the thumping of birds against the windshield or to the sound of bones beneath the wheels. None of this mattered. I was completely focused on something else and rage coursed through my veins like fire. The zombies had to be destroyed. They all had to die one final and irreversible death. 

I spotted one coming out of an alley and screeched to a halt, nearly capsizing Juggernaut in my haste. I flew out of the vehicle, drawing my swords and raced towards the zombie. To that mindless piece of filth, it probably seemed that I was food, delivering itself. It came forward, arms outstretched, eyes vacant, and a greenish drool hanging from its bottom lip. It led with its mouth, and I could have decapitated it with no effort at all. But that was too easy. It was too simple to strike at its neck and just let it fall. That wouldn't be enough. 

I swung and its arm severed at the elbow. Sidestepping, I slashed at its ribs, cutting cleanly through its side.  That single stroke left a gaping wound that oozed black sludge. It turned quickly, extending its other arm, which I severed at the shoulder. The cut wasn't clean and the arm dangled, connected to the shoulder by sinew until I hacked again and it fell harmlessly to the ground. My rage burned hotter as I hacked again and again at the abomination before me, the blackish ooze that had once been its blood seeping from each cut. Finally, when its movements were slowed and it could barely stand, I swung with all my might and precision and its head toppled to the ground. I hoped that it still felt the pain. I hoped that it suffered. 

I looked away from the wrecked corpse and saw several more of the monsters closing in, first drawn by the still-blasting music and then by the flurry of movement. I surged forward to meet them and danced the same dance as I had with the first. Limbs flew, ooze sprayed, and the music throbbed on. The ground became slick and littered with the limbs, torsos, and heads of the undead as zombies continued to appear from doorways and alleys. 

I don't know how long it lasted, but finally I was the only thing left moving on the entire street. The crows had even abandoned that place, as if they knew I was death walking amongst them. I was exhausted. I walked over to the Juggernaut and turned it off, cutting off the roar of the music. Silence rang in my ears and I noticed my rage was gone. The fire I felt now was the burning ache of overexerted muscles. 

I surveyed the carnage and the sight of the mangled zombies sent a shiver up my spine. They'd been human once. I wondered if any of their humanity remained when the infection took over. Was there some sort of consciousness left in the back of their mind? If that was true, then maybe my enraged slaughter had been murder. Maybe it had been mercy. How could I know? Thinking about it only made my head hurt and humanizing them only made me sick to my stomach. 

I couldn't get back in the car; not while I was still covered in sweat and zombie sludge. I think there was even some of my own blood, but I couldn't really tell. So I broke into an apartment to take a shower. The electricity didn't work, but the water did. The shower was cold as ice, but it did the trick. When I got out, I saw that my arms, shoulders, and back were laced with scratches, some of which had broken the skin. There were also teeth marks on my right shoulder. I didn't remember getting bitten. I didn't remember much of anything that had happened in the fighting, but I really didn't want to think about that until the city was behind me once more. 

I changed into some clean clothes, leaving the bloody and torn ones behind, and drove off into the sunset. I was exhausted, but managed to get a few more hours of driving in before I was too tired to continue. I pulled over under a highway overpass and had barely killed the engine before I nodded off.

About a Girl: Part 2, by J. D. Allen

Nothing was the same after that. Nothing was the same before it, but, before my parents died, I had hope and I felt that there was still something I could do about this tragedy. After they were dead, there was only pain and despair. I started walking around without the mask, daring the infection to take me. I sought out zombies in numbers and even drew them to me. I was reckless to the point of madness, but I just would not die. I lay awake most nights and just wished that I could. The infection wouldn't take me either, though I'd been drooled upon, bled upon, clawed, and bitten. For a long while, I cursed my immunity. Yet, for all my self-loathing and despair, I couldn't kill myself. I wouldn't let the zombies kill me either. If they somehow managed to win—somehow managed to catch me off guard—I could accept that, but I would not give up. For reasons I still don't understand, I couldn't.

The days became weeks and the weeks began to blend together. As the days stretched out after the outbreak, my feeling of isolation grew. There was no one left in my town but me. I hadn't left my town since the outbreak, so I didn't know much of what had happened in the neighboring towns or even much of what had happened in the rest of the world. Within the first week, television channels had stopped broadcasting. People's individual efforts to share news using the internet became my only source of information on the outside world. By some miracle, a good portion of the internet continued to work. Many forums and even a few video sharing sites remained up and running. As long as someone could continue to get power to their home, they could communicate with other survivors. Some people must have made a great deal of effort to keep strategic banks of servers up and running. They'd found some sense of purpose in the face of this tragedy. I envied them that.

I tried to find my own sense of purpose to deal with the sense of solitude. I ended up developing a somewhat academic interest in the zombies. I studied their behavior and their movement. I looked for patterns so I could predict their reactions and the routes they would take to get from one place to another. If zombie behavior was predictable, then I might be able to forecast their movements and such. It would make survival easier for everyone. It was pointless. I found it much better to study the most effective ways to kill the bastards. I started by dissecting a few of the zombies I killed. I wanted to find out what the infection did to their organs and if it made some places more or less vulnerable. I found out a few things I didn't really want to know.

I shared my findings on the forums and continued to experiment with different ways of killing them. Some things were effective and others weren't. For example, stabbing a zombie through the heart is not very effective. They're invulnerable to pain and their circulatory system is a mess to begin with. Even with a hole in their heart, they are able to continue chasing you until their brain is almost completely shut down due to oxygen deprivation.  Their brain basically has to die before they stop chasing you. At least, I think that's what causes it. This can take anywhere from five to ten minutes. It's much more effective to sever their spinal chord or destroy the parts of their brain that continue to function.

These academic ventures weren't enough to really make me feel like I had purpose. What good did it really do to kill all the zombies in my town? I was the only one who really benefited from it. Even sharing what I'd done with others didn't do much good. Most of them just tried to avoid the zombies at all cost. I was discouraged, but hope came in the form of the first television broadcast since the TV stations' initial shutdown. 

Someone had somehow figured out an override and was broadcasting in a loop over quite a few different channels. The transmission could best be described as a documentary. A guy in California had begun gathering people at an old prison with stone walls that he claimed was safe from the zombies.  He showed the work they were doing to make the place self-sustainable: he'd gathered farm equipment and was planting the fields, they had their own power plant generating electricity for them, and a nearby building that housed huge banks of servers. They had a well, defenses,a hospital, and a bit more. Things were organized. Together, people had a better chance of survival. Together, people had a better chance of rebuilding. Together, people had a better reason to. 

The video served as a beacon, calling anyone, willing and able, to come and join in the efforts. Dozens had come already, but there was room enough for many more. I had to go. There was nothing left for me in my town but empty streets and hastily dug graves. I began preparing for my trip the day after the transmission began airing.