Too Much

turn left

no, right

do you want to hang out tonight?

assignment due

Monday

Wednesday

Thursday

forgot the one on Tuesday

lose a point or two

psyche

drop a letter grade

Friday night

work it off

Supervising

work with

No.

deal with

the lazy

the rude

inconsiderate

little Mother F

come home

want to rest

too bad

study for a test

want to relax

that’s hard to do

dorms a mess

just like a twister went through

need to cry

need to sleep

boyfriend starts going

“Me Me Me”

calm him down

text message

friends complain

we never hang

calm them down

toss and turn

mind buzzing

fall asleep

dreams of dead mother

wake up

go home

for a day or so

hang with family?

friends?

boyfriend?

get that project done?

turn left

no, right

do you want to hang out tonight?

Chapter Nineteen

The next few days hurt. Hurt like a constant pressure is just behind my eyes ready to burst through, and a weight lays on my heart which doesn’t have enough strength to push it off anymore. The weight I hid for years is heavy now, built up. I don’t know why I am so sad exactly. I know it isn’t one thing, my mother is dead, and she had a hard life in the last few years and I had a front row seat to her demise, but it wasn’t a shock. I watched her die long ago. My boyfriend of a year is dead, and I am the one that shot him. My best friend is dead, most likely betrayed by Lila who ran instead of fighting alongside her. I can feel guilt radiate off her. She won’t meet my eyes, which is fine I don’t want to talk to her anyways. I just feel like this sadness swarms in my head, like thinking about one sad thing is too much and my head is constantly flipping channels from one sick memory to the next.

We clean out the house before we start our new trek. We don’t think another scenario will happen there, but Carl, Dad, and I don’t even discuss whether or not we are staying. We know we can’t. I find my weapons stashed in a kitchen cabinet. I feel stronger with my weapons dangling from my body everywhere. The weight of a blade is easier to carry than the weight on my heart. I find myself swinging my machete in the air, imagining hordes in front of me for practice as we walk until sundown.

We keep heading west. Lucky for us in Michigan, we’ll just need to pick a direction and eventually we will end up with all the freshwater we need. That’s our goal, to reach somewhere that at least one aspect of survival is guaranteed. We walk for weeks on end it seems. Through empty subdivisions, gathering supplies. We avoid hordes with ease, not hard to spot, and none of us left are unprepared. When we stop for the nights I find myself sharpening my blades with a whetstone I found in a creepy house I am sure belonged to a paranoid person before the world fell. Some nights are quiet, as though none of us can talk anymore. Other nights we sit and joke about anything and everything. Then there are nights where we sit around a fire and just talk about Mom. It helps, talking with Dad and Carl. Tom and Lila usually sit in silence, but for the rest of us it brings smiles from memories of baking, shopping, gardening, family dinners, instead of welled up tears when in the silence we picture all the same thing, I am sure, but alone. Visions of Mom’s last moments, looking more like a corpse in her last month of life than a human being. I almost wish she had been killed suddenly in a horde or even in a car accident had life been normal on that summer day. I wish she had lived a healthy life, not knowing death was impending, eating its way through her very own body.

One night I sit by the fire. Tom, Lila, and Dad have gone to bed in a tent we found a couple days ago. Carl is across the embers from me. He feeds Persistence the remains from dinner, a handful of squirrel meat and morning dove guts.

“At least we had time to prepare,” Carl says out of the dark silence. He pokes at the fire with a long stick. He doesn’t look up at me, and just stares into the dying flames, not even blinking.

“With Mom?” I ask. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“I mean we got to say goodbye. We had the chance to say we loved her because we saw it coming. Kind of like a really long funeral for her, so when it happened, well we are lucky because if she was normal and she died that day, she wouldn’t have had a funeral at all with all the damn zombies.”

“Lucky?” I sound cynical and I know it. I feel bad immediately; I should respect Carl’s opinion. We both lost someone too young. We missed the normal order where first as a kid you lose some great aunt you saw once, then a grandparent in your thirties, and finally with time to prepare a parent in your own later life.

“Well, not lucky, just you know. Shit, Zoe, I’m just trying to find a bright side. It’s like it’s never going to end. We had our own family apocalypse before the world had one, and now that ours should be over, we should be healing, we just have more Hell.”

I look at him. He is still crouching over the fire, refusing to move his eyes from the flames. We sit in silence for a few moments.

I break first. “It was like an apocalypse, Carl. We had to survive, continue on with life like nothing was wrong. Act normal in school, avoid talking about certain subjects, and ignore the fact that we could hear Mom puking a few rooms away when people were over. We got into fights with people because tensions were high, and I was angry at the world, still am, I think you are, too. But if anything it just proves we are made to survive.”

“Zoe, I lost almost all my friends in the past few years. I don’t even know why. They just abandoned me, even before all this shit in the past few months. Like I was diseased, guys don’t talk about things like that, but I couldn’t think of anything to say otherwise. They told me I was too quiet. Not fun anymore.” He finally looks at me. He is crying. Our family has never been the touchy feely sort, so I look at him across the fire as he cries.

The tears fall silently, and I can’t give him a touch of comfort, but I listened and I know that’s all he really needs.

A few minutes pass. Carl goes silent and we watch the embers smolder, getting darker with each passing minute. Soon the fire will be out completely. Persistence growls. I hear a rustling in the tall un-mowed park grass behind me. Both Carl and my gaze turn towards the noise. A female zombie enters our campsite. Her floral print dress isn’t the only giveaway to her gender. She is a fresh one, without the blood on her face and kitchen knife in her stomach she would have been very pretty. Her eyes are glossed over and when she emerges from the shadows into our light she opens her mouth and starts an ear-piercing scream.

I stand and slide my favorite thrower out of its sheath, and let her fly into the creature's face. It is a clean upward slit into the dainty nose. She drops, and I stand to go retrieve my knife. I put my hand on the hilt and pull with a sickening sucking noise. I am reminded of Mr. Tanks. I hear footsteps behind a bush not too far off. Her scream must have attracted more. I twist my body so it is ready to take aim when the zombie shows itself. The noise ceases, and I wait, poised to strike. There is a clicking noise, like a gun. My heart sinks.

I see the glint of the barrel before I see the man step into the light of our fire. “I won’t kill yer if yer don’t kill me.” I stand there, dumbfounded, I know that voice. It is the man from the parking lot camp. The crazy one. He starts to laugh after a moment.

He steps forward, confident that he has the upper hand. He keeps his right hand on his gun, but I can tell he is shaking, not from fear, but what looks like a medical issue. With his left hand he reaches into the brown leather jacket he is wearing. He produces a small wooden box with a lock on it, what may have been a child’s jewelry box at one point. Persistence is standing now, but he only stands alert. He doesn’t even bark at the man, as if he likes him.

“If you want food or weapons you will have to fight all of us for them,” I shout irritated that my dog isn’t doing his job.

“I don’t want none of ya’s stuff. I wouldn’t dream a hurtin’ Ruth’s kids,” and he begins to laugh softly as though sharing an inside joke with himself.

I lower my knife, Ruth’s kids. How does he know Mom’s name?

“What did you say?” I shout, I am angry all of a sudden. I have lost my curiosity, and I just want to beat this man senseless.

“Who do you think is in the box, little Miss Zoey?” And he laughs again, but not as though anything is funny, but as a nervous tick this time.

“In the box?” I whisper to myself. I hear Carl stand behind me.

The man starts hysterical laughter, “Oh, don’t ya worries there, I know your name, too, Carl,” he keeps laughing.

Carl snaps, I see him wipe a small tear that is left on his cheek away in my peripheral, and then he sprints. He rams right into the man and takes him down to the ground. The gun drops to the foliage and Carl begins punching his face over and over. Bam. Bam. Bam.

“You sick asshole,” he shouts over and over again. He makes the same rage face that Mom used to make when she was mad, when she lost her temper beyond all reason. I run over and pick up the gun the man was holding. I open the chamber, only to reveal that the gun is not loaded. Suddenly, pity fills me.

“Carl, stop! He’s harmless, the gun isn’t even loaded!” He takes one final swing at the man. Carl’s tall lanky frame stands up over the man, whose beard has trickles of blood on it now running from his nose and lips.

I step over and stand beside my brother, glaring down at the man. “Tell us who you are,” I say.

“I loved your mother. I dated her for four years before we ended it. Name’s Byron.”

“What?” Carl says. “How did you know where we were?”

“Been following ya since the horde in da city, boy. Recognized the beauty in ya sister, so much like Ruth,” and suddenly the crazy look in his eyes seems to fade. He looks lost and broken, not insane, well maybe just a little. Then it fades and his eyes glaze over a bit again, not focusing on one thing. “Box, box, box,” he almost sings. “Box, box, box.”

“I think he’s lying,” Carl says to me with Byron still singing in the background. “He probably has just been watching us for a while and learned some facts. Shut up! I don’t care about your box!”

Byron stops his singsong chant, and just stares at us. “Oh such a temper! Like your mother, haha. Ah, naw, I uster knew your mother. Loved blue, and flowers, caring, wavy brown hair. Box!” He points this time to the old, locked box.

“What is so damn special about this box?” I snap at him. He doesn’t laugh, just stares at me and holds out his hand like he needs help to stand up. I heave a heavy sigh out of annoyance and help him up.

He walks over and picks up the box, brushing it off carefully. He turns the box so the moonlight catches the top. Engraved with a skilled hand is Ruth. He sees the quizzical look on my face. He smiles and tucks the box away in his jacket again. “Promise not to use that knife o’ yers and lemme sit down, n’ I’ll explain.” Carl gives me a side-glance. We give one curt nod to each other. I grab the man’s arm and he feels like a stick through the jacket. I walk him over to the fire where he sits down and wipes some of the blood off his face with his sleeve. I feel myself make a snarl look; this man is disgusting. Not having plumbing is a problem in a zombie outbreak, but Hell most of us left make do with something to keep the smells at bay.

The man begins right away before Carl and I even sit down, “I recognized you, Zoey, I did. Saw your momma’s face in you, ‘specially when you smile. I sneaked to your camp, I did. Saw your mom clear as day. Knew she was sick from looong time ‘go, but I knew her time was a comin’. Oh, Lord, I’s sad. Wanted to make sure Ruth was safe best I could, never stopped lovin’ dat woman. I was always ‘bout half a day's walk from her, next town over I lived. Saw dem men come, saw what happened, saw Zoe leave, Carl leave, Jared leave, Tommy leave. No Ruth leave. I went in during the figh’. Blend in perfect. Oh, I can be sneaky all right. Found Ruth, passed away. Took her out the back afore they could find her. Oh no! I wouldn’ let nothing less n’ a proper funeral do Ruth. Oh no.” He finishes his story with a strange sort of smile.

“You’re a nut job.” Carl says right after.

“Wait, Carl, I think he’s telling the truth…Byron, you did recognize me in the line didn’t you? I know it. Carl, picture for a second that he doesn’t have a beard and doesn’t look like a hobo. Doesn’t he look like the guy from the photo albums Mom said were from her twenties? You know the one she said kind of lost it? Started lying.”

“How the Hell can you remember what the photos looked like, Zoe?” He seems frustrated.

“Because, Carl, I had been looking at all of Mom’s photos for the past six months. I don’t know, looking at them made it easier to pretend she wasn’t dying,” and then I am crying out of nowhere. I hold my breath and count to five while wiping the few escaped tears.

I look at this man, Byron, and I want to know everything. I know he was probably only a fraction of my mother’s life, but at this point I crave any knowledge about her from birth to death, anything that lets me know she was real and will not fade out of my life. “How long did you know my mom, Byron?” I ask.

He gives me an intelligent turn of the head, which throws me off because I didn’t think intellect was left in his mind. “I know you want to know all you can, just as I do of you, Miss Zoe. But! I think we ought to give you mom a proper memorial first.” He’s right, and we all need to be present, and it ought to be in daylight. It doesn’t make sense with the world and norms gone, but I still think that if we had her service by dark it would feel like a disrespectful secret. So we let Byron settle down into the dirt by the fire. He takes off his leather jacket and is soon fast asleep, his head resting on it as a pillow.

I take Mom into the tent with me and settle down next to Tom. I feel as though I will never be able to sleep. So many thoughts are rushing through my mind. Why did Mom never mention Byron more than the one time if she was with him so long? Or did she, and I tuned it out like an ungrateful brat who doesn’t want to hear anything about their parent’s lives?

I roll over onto my arms, supporting myself, in my normal prayer position. Mom is underneath me, like an altar, but as I close my eyes, I can’t think of what to say to God.

I wait, listening to my own breath, eyes closed. I try, “Dear God,” I whisper, but I can’t get past that point.

I open my eyes. In the dark, I see the silhouette of the box.

“Mom, I hope you can hear me…I know you can hear me. Is it nice up there? Have you started on a garden yet? I can’t wait to see it.” I feel tears escaping between whispers. “I’m trying to help Carl, but I don’t know how fulfilling a life is left now. Not much hope for life to return to the way it was…I don’t know if I want life that way anyway. So many people are gone; it’s a broken world.” I pause, I don’t know what else to say. My ears ring, waiting to hear her voice reply. I wait so long it hurts, straining them.

“I’ll find anyone who knew about the radiation. I’ll track down anyone that authorized this, and I’ll…I’ll. Goodnight, Mom. I hope I see you in the blink of an eye in your time. I love you.”

I lay back down, shaking from the tears racking my body. I put my head into my folded arms. Tom lays a foot away from me sound asleep. I cry silently so as not to wake him, and I soon find myself asleep.

I wake up from the hot August sun beating down into the hot tent. I hear Dad outside, up before all of us as usual, and my heart sinks. Does he know who Byron is? I hear chatter. It is almost friendly, almost. I kick off the blanket and move closer to Tom. He is still out like a light, and ever so warm, but without the blankets it’s comfortable. I sit still and try to pick out the conversation outside. Tom snores, and I shake him enough that he stops. He just rolls over and pulls me to him like a teddy bear.

I look at his sleeping face. His cheeks are soft looking, and rosy from the heat.

“Yeah, she was a sweetheart at times,” I hear Dad laugh uneasily. There is a silence. I hear the fire being stirred.

“So,” it’s Byron’s voice, “You have beautiful kids.” I strain my ears to hear my dad’s reply. I rarely get compliments, or even hear my dad talk about me to other people. If he does it is usually very well deserved from the introvert.

“Yeah? Thanks. Carl is pretty handy with tools; don’t think we woulda made it this far without him. Zoe, is a prize student, gets things done when they need to be done. Takes after her mom’s temper though.”

“They know how to handle themselves. They did, last night. Had me cornered, they did,” Byron laughs and it cracks, sounding almost like a strange animal. “They make a gooood team. Family. S’all about family.” Another silence ensues.

I maneuver myself out of Tom’s sleeping bear hug. I stand up and straighten my clothes. I slept in jean shorts I found in an abandoned house a week ago, and one of my own actual shirts that hasn’t been lost or destroyed yet, a blue button up blouse with small pockets scattered around it. I fill the seven pockets with an assortment of things around my tent: A tiny Swiss army knife, matches, a lighter, a short cord, and a gorgeous blue pebble I found yesterday on the side of the road. I clip my thrower onto the belt loop, and swing my machete over my shoulder. I quickly brush my hair, before grabbing Mom from beside my pillow.

I walk out of the tent, and zip it behind me. I carry Mom with both hands to Dad, where he sits on an overturned bucket. I hand the box to him, and he takes it as though it is made of glass. Byron must have told him. I step back and go across the fire, where Byron sits on a long log.

It’s quiet; Byron and I sit staring into the fire as it slowly gains size in the morning. Dad fondles the box, his fingers going over the word Ruth again and again.

Looking to my left I see Byron. His brown eyes are almost in a trance, his beard looks even more gray and scraggly in the morning light, and I can see worry creases on his tanned forehead. He does look as though at one point he could have been attractive. My peripheral catches movement, and I glance down. His hands are washing themselves with the air, but everything else of his body is perfectly still.

Eventually, I get up from the fire ring and begin to take a count of our supplies. I am unnoticed by the two, I am sure. Persistence comes from around the back of the two tents and stands by my side as I take a toll of our few granola bars, one bottle of water, and cucumbers we found in an overgrown vegetable garden. I give a short whistle, and Persistence perks his ears. I begin to walk toward a cluster of houses about a half mile off with Persistence by my side. Looking around me, we must have set up camp last night in a park. Not too far off I see a playground. On the top of a slide I see a lump. It looks pink, like a little girl's dress. I imagine the pile of rotting bones underneath the sun-faded fabric.

“At least she died playing,” I say to Persistence. He looks up at me and cocks his head to the right.

I find myself in a very nice home, which shows very few signs of ransacking. The fridge door is open, the pantry is empty, and the three bathrooms are lacking toilet paper, but the sun shines peacefully on white carpets throughout the house. There are still blankets in this home, folded neatly onto the backs of matching leather furniture. Strangely, there is a red stain on one of the fuzzy white blankets, but it does not appear to be blood. Food of some sorts, but the stain seems out of place here in the perfect suburban home. Persistence wanders up the stairs and I follow him. He goes straight to a door at the end of the hall. He sticks his nose under the crack and furiously tries to dig through the carpet to gain access to the room.

I look around at the rest of the doors on this floor. They are all open, leading to more white-carpeted rooms, one a master bedroom with a made bed, covered in cozy blue comforters. Another a boy’s bedroom, with two twin beds, one with Woody on the top blanket, the other Buzz from Toy Story.

This last room is shut tight. I go to the door and hold my machete at the ready as I swing the door open.

“Sit,” I say firmly to Persistence to keep him from running into danger. He sits, but not fully. His hind legs are still posed to run if need be.

Turning the handle, I walk into the room. A breeze comes through an open window behind the bed. In this room is one full size bed; its unmade pink blankets lay in a pile on the end of the bed. There is a small plastic table, set with play food and dishes. The red plastic chairs are overturned. It seems this room was a last stand for someone. In the corner, by a closed closet is a stash of bottled water, graham crackers, and fruit snacks. A pathetic store, really, but I shove it into the plastic grocery bag I grabbed from downstairs anyways. I take one last look around the room. By the bed, on the floor is a box of markers and a picture. There are a variety of scribbled flowers all over the paper. A red marker lies on the ground next to the drawing. I pick it up and see that the lid is off. It is the scented kind, and the smell comes off strongly. Almost as if it hadn’t been left out for months or weeks on end as it must have been. But the tip of the marker looks moist. I make a mark on the paper. It is fresh, clear as day.

Persistence is standing in the room now. He smells the spot where the food once was. I go to the open window. I remember using a window as a hiding spot back at the farmhouse, but as I peer outside. I see that the window has no roof below it. No place for someone to hide. I hear Persistence whining. I pull my head back inside and see him start pawing at the closet door.

In the closet, of course. I slowly open the white door, machete drawn slightly behind my back. I see nothing but clothes, until I look down and see a small, dirty foot under a pile of socks. The foot doesn’t move, and I become scared that the child it belongs to is dead. Persistence butts his head between my legs and sniffs into the clothes.

“Hey!” comes the voice of a little girl, muffled behind purple and pink dresses.

“Lady, you better get your doggie away from my sister!” says another voice from behind me. I turn around, and see a little blond head make its way out from under the bed skirt. He can’t be more than eight years old, I think, as he stands up.

“Persistence! Sit!” I say. I’m in shock. He sits down, and looks back at me, his tail wagging, eating up the attention.

“Your doggie is nice!” Giggles the little girl. She stumbles out of the closet. She has to be even younger than the boy. I look back from one to the other. “Brother! He’s nice, pet him!”

I see the boy’s eyes get excited, and he looks at me. I shove my machete back into the sheath on my back. I give him a small smile and nod. He walks quickly to Persistence and both of them pet him, until he rolls over on his back, wagging his tail in a blur of excitement. The little girl must be about six. She is wearing a purple dress, and she has long brunette hair that is a knotted mess, all down her back. She has bright brown eyes that match her hair. The boy is wearing jeans that are not buttoned and a shirt with dinosaurs on it. Both kids are filthy from head to toe, and neither are wearing shoes, their toenails are caked with dirt.

“Is this your house?” I ask.

“Yeah! But it’s just us now.” The boy sounds sad, but he is distracted by Persistence.

“And what are your names?”

The boy straightens up, and sticks out his small hand to me, “I’m Harris!” I look down at him and put my hand out. He takes it and shakes it. Judging by his house his parents must have been well to do, and he picked up on a few norms. “That’s Robin, she’s my little sister. Robin, shake hands.”

Robin gets up from the floor from petting Persistence and walks over to me and holds out her hand in the same way Harris did.

“It is very nice to meet you two. Who takes care of you?” I venture.

“Well, since that day I have been taking care of us!” Harris says.

“Oh?” What day?

“Yep. I found those fruit snacks and graham crackers in the secret spot Mom used to hide school snacks.” He smiles proudly.

“Is this all you have left?” He shakes his head up and down. “Well then, would you two like to come back with me? My dog seems to really like you.”

“I’ve been taking care of the house just like Mommy did!” Robin says. “We can take care of ourselves, thank you very much.”

“When was the last time you had a bath?”

“Don’t need one,” she says matter of fact.

“Where are you going to get more food?” She looks a bit puzzled by this and looks to her brother.

“We will make the crackers last for another year,” he says.

“A year? Oh my, you two will wither away before fall starts!” I say in mock surprise.

“Okay, Robin, I’ve decided we should go with the lady and her dog.”

“Brother, Mom said no strangers.”

“Mom was eaten, Robin.” It is at this that she begins to cry.

I bend down and pet her hair. She hugs me tight. I pick her up; she is even lighter and thinner than I first thought.

“Harris, please grab clothes for you and your sister,” I say firmly. He takes off down the hall to the room with the two boy twin beds. I wonder what happened to that brother that didn’t happen to these two.

In a few minutes he comes back down the hall with a backpack stuffed with clothes. Robin has calmed down, but I came to learn through her tears that her parents and brother were in the car when they were eaten. I imagine from the bits and pieces I got from her that they were in the middle of buckling the first child into his seat when a horde came. These two were still in the house watching from a window as it happened.

I set Robin on the bed and organize the clothes Harris picked out before going to the closet and getting a few outfits for Robin. We set out, the sun overhead indicating late morning in August.