ALL TOGETHER NOW: A ZOMBIE STORY Chapters 1-5

The following is the first 14 chapters from my book of 96 Chapters, All Together Now: A Zombie Story. You can get the whole thing here.

WARNING

This YOUNG ADULT novel is mean and nasty and intended for a mature audience. It is absolutely not appropriate for younger readers.

In no way is this warning an apology. I believe a horror story should aim to shock and disturb. But since much of my writing is targeted at younger readers and I run the blog Middle Grade Ninja, I feel it's only fair to warn parents and sensitive readers up front:

In the pages that follow is a gruesome, repugnant tale featuring horrific acts of violence sure to warp young minds.

Esteemed Reader, if that sounds like as much fun to you as it does to me, we'll get along fine.

1 

I'M NOT A BAD WRITER, but I'm amazing with a baseball bat, which is why I'm still alive to write this.

     I get mostly A's in English, or at least I did before the school burned down. Two summers ago my short story "Raccoon Avenger" was published in the Harrington Herald.

     I just wanted you to know this story isn't going to suck.

     It might suck.

     I'm not exactly writing it under ideal circumstances. We don't dare turn on a flashlight. I'm writing this by moonlight on the floor so they won't see me through the windows.

     This story will be filled with a lot of terrible things. That's not my fault. A lot of terrible things happened.

     I'm just going to write what I know. After all, someone should be writing this down, and for all I know the world's great writers are all dead, or worse. So you're stuck with me.

     At least this will be a short book. There are only 300 pages in this journal and there's a good chance I won't live long enough to fill them all. So if this story should just stop somewhere in the middle, you'll know I didn't make it.

     Or maybe I lost this journal. Let's hope it's that.

     I can hear them as I write this, shuffling around outside, moaning in that low way they all do. I only really pay attention when the moans get close.

     When they get close, their moan becomes a growling snarl that's one of the last sounds you'll ever hear.

     They look harmless, confused. They stumble and stagger like drunks. They're so slow, you might think you could walk by them, but that'd be a mistake.

     Get too close, they'll rip your chest open, and you'll die hearing their snarling and your own screaming and the splash of your insides against the tops of your shoes.

     Hopefully, you don't know what I'm talking about.

     Hopefully, as you're reading this, it's all over and the world is a nice place again with baseball and picnics and apple pie.

     Hopefully, you've only read about zombies in books, and much better books than this one.

     But probably not. Probably there is no you.

     Or maybe you're a different species that evolved after human beings finally got wiped out and you're curious to see what we were like.

     Or maybe you're an alien, moving in now that the world is vacant—I mean, even the dead can't live forever, can they?

     If you are an alien or a new species, you don't even know what baseball or apple pie are and you should read about them instead of zombies.

     I don't even know if that's the right word for them. Zombies is what they were calling them on the news back when the power was on and the broadcasts were still running.

     Zombie is as good a name as any and it's what Michelle, Levi, Chuck, and I call them.

     Before the news crapped out, they said there were zombies in Europe and China and even Japan.

     If the human race is extinct, who's going to read this journal?

     This is stupid. I'm not writing this.

2 

I CHANGED MY MIND. I wasn't going to write this, but there's nothing else to do except hide. I can't sleep or go outside.

     Levi's stopped talking to himself, which is good. He was freaking Michelle and me out.

     Now he sits quietly in the corner of the store, his arms wrapped around his legs, knees curled to his chest. Sometimes he rocks, but mostly he just stares straight ahead like he's seeing something Michelle and I can't.

     Michelle's not sleeping, either. She hasn't moved for a while, but I crawled by her and saw her eyes were open. That's easy to spot on a black girl. The whites of her eyes stand out perfectly against the darkness of the room and her skin.

     Levi's white, by the way, and so am I, and so is my little brother Chuck. Just in case you were wondering.

     This story is kind of going to be about me—I mean I can only really tell you the stuff I saw, right? So I guess I should tell you about myself.

     My name is Richard Allen Genero. I'm 15 years old. Michelle Elizabeth Kirkman is also 15, Charles Walter Genero (technically deceased) is 6, and Levi Davis (I don't know Levi's middle name) is 17.

     Chuck and I have lived all our lives in Harrington, Indiana, which is a little town 37 miles north of Indianapolis, not too far from Brownsborough. I was born here and if the things groaning outside have their way, I'll die here.

     If you know anything about what happened, you know about Harrington. After all, Harrington's the birthplace of Kirkman Soda, which is where we're going.

     That's where the cure is.

     That's where Chuck needs us to go.

     I don't go by Richard, by the way. I can't stand that name and I don't want you to think you're reading a book by some jerk named Richard, or worse, Dick.

     I go by Ricky.
     The girl I'm traveling with, Michelle Kirkman, is the daughter of Gerald Kirkman, who

3

I DIDN'T DIE. JUST IN case you were concerned because I stopped writing so suddenly.

     Dead fingers tapped the window beside the double doors, one finger striking the glass at a time like an impatient person waiting.

     It broke my concentration.

     After a few moments, the zombie moved on, but I'd totally forgotten what I was going to write.

     So let's start over:

     Michelle, Levi, Chuck, and I got back to Harrington this afternoon. It took us four hours to get here from Brownsborough—a trip that used to take 25 minutes by car.

     We walked in the fields that run parallel to I-65. We only saw three zombies during the whole walk, aside from Chuck, of course.

     The first two weren't a problem.

     In our first hour of walking, we came across a green truck lying on its roof, its wheels in the air like the stiff limbs of a carcass.

     It was in the center of a field, but we could tell from the thick tracks leading up to the wreckage that the truck had come from the highway.

     A side mirror lay in the grass several feet away and I had an idea the truck had flipped over at least twice, breaking off its mirror before rolling to a stop on its back.

     Levi wanted to walk around the wreck and I thought that was smart, but Michelle marched straight to it. "They could've packed food or weapons," she called over her shoulder.

     That was a fair point.

     I hurried to catch up, but I stopped when Michelle brought our only gun out of her jeans and pointed it through the truck's windshield.

     She knew not to fire it. A gun's good for getting out of a tight spot, but the shot will draw the attention of every zombie in hearing distance.

     I had my bat up, ready to swing before I knew what the danger was.

Then I heard the muffled thumping. There were two corpses pounding on the windshield from inside the truck.

     "They're out of food," Levi said.

     When I looked where he was pointing I felt faint and my vision clouded with black spots. If this had happened a week ago, I would've thrown up. But I've seen a lot since then.

     At first I could see only the zombies lying on the roof of the truck's cab, Mommy and Daddy. Both of them had the dark-rimmed, all-white eyes of the dead, sunken because the pale grey skin surrounding them had gone lax and hung off their skulls like dough.

     Mommy was wearing a blue summer dress, stained maroon all down the front. Daddy had broken his neck and his head lolled on his shoulder. An unnatural bulge protruded beneath his jaw and stretched the skin there to near bursting.

     Then I saw what Levi meant by "food."

     Hanging upside down behind Mommy and Daddy was a car seat. It was still strapped in, despite the seat belt straps on either side having been gnawed through.

     The soft grey lining of the car seat was stained red and black and covered in flecks of skin and hair.

     "They're trapped in there," Levi said.

     "How can you tell?" Michelle asked.

     Levi shrugged. "If they could've got out, they would've. Let 'em starve."

     He kept walking. Michelle followed.

     I stood a while staring at the car seat, but when I heard a faint crack in the windshield the zombies were pounding on, I got moving.

     The third zombie wasn't trapped. He came right at us.

4

WE DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS a zombie at first. He staggered as he crossed the field. From a distance, he could've just been injured.

     He was about a football field from us when Michelle said, "That man's headed for the highway. We should warn—"

     The thing growled, the sound a combination of hoarse moan and sharp snarl, screamed from stiffened vocal cords.

     Michelle had the gun up and aimed before the zombie could turn toward us.

     His right arm was missing from the bicep down. His mouth stretched too wide. As he got closer I saw his jaw was broken and hanging permanently open, held in place by strips of rotting flesh.

     None of them run, really. Most of the time they shamble slow, but they move a little faster when motivated.

     If we'd been running, the zombie never would've caught up to us. If he hadn't been in our path, we would've let him be.

     Some people enjoy killing them, like maybe they're making the world safer one zombie at a time. But when the whole world is filled with those things and more people turning every day, I doubt one more or less zombie makes much difference.

     I don't like killing them.

     'Killing' isn't really the right word. How do you kill something that's already dead?

     It isn't easy, but they can at least be put down and afterward they don't bother anyone anymore. Whether they're dead then or were before, I don't know. I'll leave it to the philosophers to decide.

     Killing zombies isn't hard. They're slow and dumb and have no weapons, aside from their teeth and fingernails. But you have to be very careful and know what you're doing.

     I've seen people fire round after round into their chests and the zombies keep coming. You have to kill the brain. Otherwise they don't die, or stop being undead, or whatever.

     I've seen them walk around on fire and it doesn't bother them. Hack off their legs, and they'll crawl after you without stopping to notice they can't walk.

     They feel no pain.

     So far as I can tell, they feel nothing except hunger. They don't think, they don't sleep, and I've never seen one go to the bathroom.

     They kill and roam in search of more things to kill, and that's all they do.

     Michelle had the zombie locked in her gun sight, but only as a precaution.

     Levi and I flanked him.

     I had my lucky baseball bat, but Levi carried an axe, so I let him take the first swing, and the second, both aimed at the thing's legs. The blows were intended to disarm (disleg?) rather than kill.

The zombie crumpled to his knees, his white eyes never leaving my face, his craven moan never changing pitch, his one remaining arm stretched toward me.

     Levi hacked at that arm and I swung my metal bat straight into the zombie's forehead, like hitting a baseball off a batting tee.

     Though the bottom half of his one arm now hung by the thin membrane of skin Levi hadn't severed, the zombie still had both biceps raised toward me.

     I brought the bat down again. When I raised it, it was covered in the same blackish red that sprayed from his head in a fine mist.

     The zombie convulsed.

     I swung the bat one last time and when it connected, the thing's skull made a loud cracking sound like an ice-weighted branch snapping. The impact traveled up the bat and stung my hands.

     The zombie went limp and silent.

     Levi wiped his axe on his purple "New Life Christian Church" T-shirt, then dropped it to his side and kept walking.

     I should've kept walking, but I didn't.

     Maybe it was the clothes the zombie was wearing: brown slacks, a blue and black striped polo shirt, and black dress shoes, as though he'd been at a church supper. Maybe it was the wedding band on his left hand.

     I knelt beside the corpse and rooted in his pocket until I found his wallet.

     According to his license, this man had been Gary Boyer. He had four credit cards, a gym membership, and a photo from his human days. He was standing with a woman, two small children, and Donald Duck in front of that giant golf ball in Epcot.

     "Are you coming?" Michelle asked as she passed.

     I couldn't speak just then, so I dropped the wallet and got to my feet.

     From a distance behind us came the quiet moans of Chuck, ever following.

5

THE KIRKMAN SODA BOTTLING PLANT was the third Harrington exit off I-65, but off the first was Ernie's filling station.

     For the record, I didn't want to go. I was just as hungry as Michelle and Levi, but we'd been avoiding buildings the whole walk for a reason.

     A zombie alone in a field is one thing, easy to spot and relatively easy to put down. But the only way to truly know how many zombies are in a building is to go inside.

     The other problem is the people who are still living, crouched in whatever shelter they can find, terrified, maybe insane—the last week has had that effect on people—and armed.

     If they see something come into their shelter walking on two legs, they might shoot first and check to see if it was a zombie after.

     Ernie's has a glass front, so we could see most everything from outside. But we couldn't see what might be hiding between the aisles of motor oil and candy and travel goods, or in the bathrooms, or in Ernie's office.

     It was Michelle who made me see the logic in it—but don't put this on her. In the end, it was my stomach that did the convincing.

     "Daddy's plant is five or six miles from Ernie's," Michelle said. "But it will take us longer to get there."

     "Why?"

     "Because of Bridgeport Heights, Autumn Creek, and Tree Side Point."

     "What?"

     Michelle stared at me, waiting for me to catch on. When she saw I wasn't going to, she rolled her eyes and said, "The subdivisions Daddy owns off the next exit. Plus there are two other subdivisions and an apartment complex. We'll have to go around them."

     She was right, of course, and I felt stupid for not thinking of it.

     It's nothing but fields and farms from Brownsborough to Ernie's, but the second Harrington exit leads to neighborhoods that stretch out on either side. Here I was protesting going into one building and trying instead to march us into an army of rotting suburbanites.

     "It's already late afternoon and the sun will be down before we can get to Daddy." Michelle put her hands on her hips and sighed. "We may need to find someplace to stay tonight. But first we need food, and Ernie's is our best bet. It's the only thing off this exit."

     "There's the Harrington Inn," Levi said, shifting a gnawed toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

     "That's on the opposite side of the overpass," Michelle said. "And the next building on the same side as Ernie's is the jail, and that's at least two blocks away."

     "Sounds safe," I said, throwing my hands up. "While we're at it, why don't we swing by the Java Jive. I could use a latte, maybe a muffin. If we hurry, we can still catch the 7 o'clock movie. I want to see the new James Bond, but only if you guys want to. We can see something else."

     "Funny," Levi said, not laughing or even smiling.

     "I'm hungry," Michelle said through gritted teeth, her eyes locked on mine. "Tonight, I'll be even hungrier. Tomorrow morning I'll be weak and we have a lot of walking still to do. We'll go slow and be safe. If the place is crawling, we'll backtrack and go around."

     Every so often, it surprises me this is the same Michelle Kirkman I grew up hating almost as much as I hate her father. She's been a rich brat as long as I've known her, but now that money doesn't mean anything, she's different.

     My dad used to say you know you're hungry when gas station food sounds good. There was more to our argument, but I don't remember the rest and in the end Michelle's plan made sense.

     It was after six when we got to Ernie's.

     We could see it from the last few fields before Harrington proper starts. It was a small building with an awning stretched out over six pumps, and neither humans nor zombies milled around outside.

     Atop the awning were bold red letters spelling out "ERNIE'S." The sign was neon, but Harrington hadn't had power for days and the red letters were as dull and dark and lifeless as the rest of the world.

     In a backyard three houses down from the jail, two adult figures stood beside a swing set. They weren't moving or talking, just standing and staring in that mindless way of the dead.

     They were far enough away from Ernie's not to be a concern.

     Michelle had her gun out and Levi and I had our axe and bat at the ready, but it was unnecessary. 
     We were able to creep right up to Ernie's and around to the front without being seen.

     Or so we thought.

Continue on to chapters 6-10, or get the whole book.

ALL TOGETHER NOW: A ZOMBIE STORY Chapters 6-10

 

6

I STARED THROUGH ERNIE'S FRONT windows until I was sure nothing was moving inside.

     "How do you want to do this?" I asked, but Michelle was already opening the double doors.

     "Hello?" she called into the food mart.

     No response came, spoken or snarled, so she went inside and let the glass doors swing shut behind her.

     "Stay out here," I said to Levi. "If something's coming, we need to know about it. And keep an eye out for Chuck."

     Levi stared blankly at me, then looked away.

     "Or just stand there not saying anything," I said, and went inside.

     I was so used to the smell of rotting corpses, both walking and non-walking, that at first I didn't register the stench coming from Ernie's office.

     Michelle was crouching in an aisle, stuffing cans of tuna, bags of chips, and beef jerky into her backpack. I took my own pack off and set it down. I wanted to fill it, but first I wanted to make sure we were alone.

     I took a flashlight from one aisle and batteries from another. When I had it working, I went first to the men's room and found it empty.

     In the women's room, I raised my bat before I realized the figure coming toward me also had a flashlight and raised bat. For the first time in a week I really looked at myself. I had streaks of dirt on my face and my blond hair looked brown.

     Below the left corner of my mouth was a giant zit, gorged white. In 6th grade I had a bad case of pizza face and my mom bought me heavy duty soap. But I hadn't bathed in days, and Ernie's didn't sell Neutrogena.

     I checked the sink's faucet, but nothing came. There was clean water in the toilet, though, so I popped the zit and freshened up.

     Aside from my reflection, the women's room was vacant.

     Next, I checked the office. That's where I found Mrs. Ernie.

     I never did know Ernie's last name, but I'd been in there enough times to know his wife was a short Vietnamese woman named Sue. She was slumped against Ernie's desk, a perfectly round, blackened hole half an inch above her right eye.

     There was plenty of daylight in Ernie's office, making it easy for me to play detective. Against the wall was a ladder that led up to the roof. The hatch at the top was open.

     I could tell by the dried blood and skin beneath Mrs. Ernie's fingernails, that she'd been dead before getting shot.

     I went back into the mart to gather supplies.

     Levi stood inspecting the row of dark refrigerators on the back wall.

     "Anybody want a soda?" he said, grinning, but neither Michelle nor I laughed.

     Levi produced two bottles of water and tossed one to Michelle and one to me. For himself he took a beer, which he chugged. "Warm as piss," he gasped when he finished, but that didn't stop him from grabbing another.

     "Thanks for standing guard," I said, moving closer to the glass doors so I could see the street out front.

     Michelle tossed a deodorant stick to each of us and took one for herself. "If you expect me to stay around you guys, you'll hang onto those," she said.

     Levi moved behind the counter to get a pack of smokes. He had them open and was lighting a cigarette before Michelle saw what he was doing.

     "Put that out," she cried, hurrying over as though Levi had started an actual fire. "Put that out right now!"

     "Why would—Hey!" Levi yelled as Michelle smacked the cigarette out of his hand to the floor and stomped it.

     "What's the matter with you? I just wanted—"

     "Smoke will attract them," Michelle said. "And besides that, it will kill you."

     Levi stared at Michelle dumbstruck. A grin broke across his face and he burst out laughing so hard he choked.

     "Shut up!" I said. By the way I said it, the other two knew I wasn't asking.

     But I wasn't looking at them. My eyes were trained on the street in front of Ernie's.

     "Get down right now." I dropped to my knees and lay on my stomach.

7

 

IT'S THE MOANING THAT GETS to me.

     I can handle the smell. It's bad, but like any smell, if you breathe it long enough, you get used to it, even the stench of rotting flesh. But that constant moaning sets my teeth on edge.

     Their moans don't change. They'll snarl at prey, but otherwise there's no emotion. They could be happy, sad, in pain, or in utter ecstasy, and you'd never know. Their moans are continuous and hungry and without human inflection.

     Lying flat on my stomach in Ernie's, I could hear them, but I couldn't see them without risking their seeing me.

     Michelle was also on her stomach and she whispered, "How many?"

     I held up three fingers, but it sounded like more.

     Three zombies were all I'd seen before I hit the deck. They'd been on the other side of the street.

     I didn't know if they'd seen me. I'd tried not to give them the chance, but their moans were growing louder, closer.

     Levi poked his head out from behind the counter and lifted his axe. He started to stand.

     I shook my head.

     If they came in, we'd have no choice but to take them out or be eaten. The zombie in the field had been the exception. Most don't travel alone.

     For the three zombies I'd seen, there might be another three or six or nine I hadn't seen. The last thing I wanted was to attract the attention of a horde.

     "They'll pass," I whispered. "We wait."

     But they didn't sound like they were passing. I could hear their steps on the cement outside as they shambled past the gas pumps.

     I wanted to lift my head to the glass, peek out just enough to see what they were up to, but I kept my cheek pressed to the cold tile floor.

     They moaned in unison, the sound of each harmonizing with the moans of the others so I couldn't tell if the moans were coming from three zombies, or five, or ten. All I knew for sure is they were on the other side of the door.

     WHAM!!!

     At first I thought it was the sound of a gun, but then it happened again, just above me.

     "Sh—" Michelle slapped a hand to Levi's mouth before he could say more.

     A corpse's palm smacked against the window glass, fell away, and smacked again.

     A second hand smacked the glass, closer to the entrance. Then a third hand started on the other side of the door, so all three hands were smacking in unison.

     Michelle bit the fingers on her left hand, but in her right hand our one gun was trained on the glass.

     I tightened my grip on my bat.

     WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!!

     The glass wavered, rippling with each smack, but didn't break.

     Yet.

     WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!!

     The pounding was heavier, more insistent.

     The moaning, of course, didn't change.

     WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!! WHAM!!!

     A woman's voice: "Run, Tommy! Run!"

     Every dead hand withdrew and the glass settled.

     "Tommy, watch out! Tommy, to your right!"

     My breath caught and I couldn't seem to exhale.

     "Tommy? Tommy? Tommy! TOMMY! TOMMY! TOM—"

     After that was just screaming. It grew higher in pitch, then cut off suddenly.

     Minutes passed.

    There were no human noises from outside, only moans. They didn't sound any farther away, but no corpses were visible through the front windows. At least I couldn't see any from the floor.

     More minutes passed.

     I pushed upward.

     "Ricky!" Michelle spat through clenched teeth. "Get down."

     I ignored her and rose to my hands and knees so I could crawl closer. I lifted my head slowly, just enough to peek over the window ledge.

     The zombies weren't gone and there weren't three of them.

     There were seven.

8

I COULDN'T SEE TOMMY OR the woman who'd screamed for him. But I knew they'd been to the left because every zombie in Ernie's lot was turned in that direction. Most of them were salivating.

     I worm-crawled to Michelle and Levi. "They've forgotten us," I said.

     I didn't know if that was true or if I just wanted it to be.

     "What do we do?" Michelle asked.

     The answer turned out to be nothing.

     For the next three hours, we stayed where we were and quietly ate from the boxes of cereal we found on Ernie's shelves. Frosted Flakes never tasted so good.

     Every so often, I'd slither over to the window and peek. Each time I saw at least five zombies milling around like kids waiting for their parents to pick them up when the mall closes.

     After a while, the sunlight streaming through the front windows diminished and it became clear we were staying right where we were for the evening.

     "You mind taking first watch?" Levi asked.

     I didn't. He curled up on his side.

     Michelle tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a carousel display at the end of one of the four aisles. We crawled to it together.

     I didn't know why we were crawling toward the carousel and I didn't care. After three hours on Ernie's floor, I was up for doing anything other than lying still and listening to moans.

     There were books and magazines stacked seven racks high. We didn't dare reach for anything higher than the second rack or turn the carousel.

     Michelle pulled down three books and spread them on the floor. One was a mystery called Angela Hibbard and Her Kitties in: The Teacup Murders, another was a romance titled Destiny Takes a Lover, and the third was a black journal—the same one you're reading.

     Michelle made a face, but picked up Destiny Takes A Lover. I, of course, took the journal. I found a package of pens hanging high on the side of an aisle facing away from the windows, so I figured it was safe for me to reach for them.

     No one said much that night.

     Michelle read and pretended to sleep.

     Levi actually fell asleep at one point, but then he woke up. He discovered a rack of adult magazines behind the register—the kind wrapped in plastic with a black square hiding the cover. He took it to the register side of the counter and whatever he did back there was his business.

     I wrote in this journal. Every so often, I peeked through the window hoping to see Chuck, but saw only adult zombies.

     They stumbled and stared and moaned, waiting like frogs for flies to flit across their path, waiting for some sound to tip them off there was prey hiding only a few feet away inside Ernie's.

9

I LIKE BOOKS. MAYBE NOT as much as I used to like video games, but I knew some guys who never read even one book.

     It's still strange to write I knew some guys, but the guys I'm thinking of are either dead or stumbling around somewhere in search of living flesh.

     Some authors have that ability to suck you into their world completely. I've been reading on a bus or in study hall and the real world has fallen away and for the time I was reading I was somewhere else.

     Writing creates that out-of-body experience on steroids.

     Maybe that's why I didn't notice Levi taking the pack of cigarettes off the counter.

     Maybe that's why I didn't notice Levi sneaking outside until the glass doors of Ernie's were shutting behind him and it was already too late.

     "Levi!" I whispered, but he couldn't hear me from outside.

     The first thing I saw when I crawled over was there were no zombies. I don't know if maybe some Tommy was left in the street and they went to eat leftovers, or what.

     But the coast was clear.

     Levi stayed only a few steps from the front doors, probably so he could come running back if there was trouble.

     I cracked the front door and whispered, "What are you doing?"

     "What's it look like?" Levi said, exhaling cigarette smoke and not bothering to whisper.

     I felt silly being on my knees, so I stood. The street in front of Ernie's was empty. I poked my head outside and looked all the way down to the jail and then across the overpass.

     The coast was clear.

     "Where are they?"

     "There's some in that church." Levi pointed to a one-story brick building catty-corner from the jail.

     A big white cross protruded from its front beside two glass doors. Through them I saw a woman in a yellow dress. I couldn't tell if she was alive, but if Levi said there were zombies in there, I couldn't see how she could be.

     In front of the building, someone had abandoned a silver Ford. Its door hung open.

     You can't throw a stone in Indiana without hitting a church. We'd only just left Levi's church yesterday.

     "We still going to Kirkman's?"

     I nodded. There were at least four churches I knew of between Ernie's and the Kirkman Soda plant. We were traveling in God's country.

     "Well then, now looks like a good time to get going," Levi said. "Get your stuff and wake up sleeping beauty in there and tell her I'm taking these ciga—"

     Levi screamed and jumped in the air.

     When I looked down, I saw why.

10

THE LITTLE GIRL ONLY HAD one hand, but it was clawing the back of Levi's boot. She'd been five or six. Her blond hair was greasy and streaked with dirt and dust, but there were still two pink barrettes on either side of her head.

     Levi jerked his leg back and kicked her hard enough to shatter her front teeth.

     The girl made no noise, just reached toward Levi with her pale dead hand.

     "Why ain't she moaning?"

     I shook my head.

     "Never seen one didn't make noise," Levi said.

     The girl was dressed in a ripped T-shirt with a bear on it. The left side beneath her missing arm was caked in dried blood.

     Her pants had slid off as she slithered because her thighs ended in stumps. The jagged end of a broken femur poked from the skin of her right thigh and her left leg had been bitten off below the buttock.

     Levi stepped back.

     Using her one arm, she dragged herself toward him, making no noise other than the sliding of decayed meat across cement.

     I knew what had happened. I'd seen it before.

     This little girl got herself surrounded by a pack, probably after they'd eaten whatever adult was looking out for her. They'd been feeding on her when something distracted them.

     They'd left her to crawl the earth mostly eaten.

     Levi called her a bunch of foul names. I'd tell you what he said, but I've decided not to swear in this journal.

     In real life, there's been a lot of swearing. Of course there has. It's the apocalypse. Everyone's been swearing, including me a few times.

     But my Grandma Lacey always told me swear-words are the first choice of the weak writer and the intellectually slow. I've read enough graffiti on gas station toilets to know she was probably right.

     When Levi ran out of names to call the dead girl, he stomped her head.

     His aim was off. Instead of crushing her skull, he broke her jaw.

     Her lips slid crooked. Still she made no noise, and when she flopped over I saw why: her throat had been torn out and probably her voice box as well.

     Levi raised his leg and her one hand seized his ankle.

     Her fingers stayed clasped as Levi stomped her twice more, but released on the third stomp when her face caved in like a rotten jack-o'-lantern.

     Her arm dropped and lay still.

     Levi spat on her and put his cigarette out in the mashed all-white goo of her eye socket.

     When his eyes met mine, he looked embarrassed as though I'd caught him behind the counter with a dirty magazine. "I hate those things."

     I nodded. "I'm going to get my backpack."

     Levi lit a fresh cigarette.

     I went back into Ernie's and found Michelle was already awake and eating an apple.

     "Pack some of those for the road," I said. "The coast is clear and we're leaving."

     Michelle's backpack was already full, but mine wasn't. I stuffed cans of tuna into it and bottled water and sticks of jerky and plastic bags of crackers that I took out of their boxes.

     That was a trick Michelle showed me. Boxes take up a lot of room—you can fit more crackers if you trash them.

     I'd just put the backpack's straps on my shoulders when Levi started screaming.

Continue on to chapters 11-14, or get the whole book.