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.