Eleven

          I dream of the school. I dream of Emily, Jack, Jagger, Cole and somehow the toddler, sitting in the teacher’s lounge, laughing like we’re old friends. Zombies bang on the doors, the sounds of their bodies hitting the metal echoing through the halls. But everyone is smiling, happy, as if nothing is wrong, like there isn’t an apocalypse raging outside.

            I wake up in a cold sweat with Gwen sleeping and movement in the kitchen. Untangling myself from the blankets, I turn around and peer over the couch to see Marcus. His back is turned towards me as he goes through the movements of making breakfast. I don’t like that I fell asleep and that he’s awake, down here with me, but I need to put my trust in him. He’s going to be leading Gwen and I to the place she will stay.

            “We will have to move through a small town to get to the camp on the other side,” Marcus explains as we trudge up a hilly field, away from the houses and the roads. “Most of the undead are long gone, but there might be a few still lurking around.”

            “How long will it take to get there?” Gwen wonders. We near the edge of a forest and in the mud she slips, almost falling before Marcus grabs her arm and puts her back on her feet. He moves into the brush for a few moments and returns with a tall stick.

            “Here. It will help you with the waking.” He looks to me and I shake my head. I much prefer to be empty handed with such open space around us. For the first time since the city I can finally strap my shotgun through my backpack. “Two days, one night. We should be there by dusk tomorrow if everything goes as planned.”

            Bullet watches Gwen with parenting eyes as she uses the walking stick to use the peak of the hill. I smile a little, letting it disappear before anyone can catch me.

            “So tell me,” I start, grasping onto the straps of my knapsack. “What’s going on with the military around here?”

            Marcus’ expression turns grim. “It’s a sore subject for a lot of people. They’ve been slaughtering around these parts, killing off the survivors.”

            I nod. “That’s what we’ve heard on our way here. They’re doing it everywhere.”

            “Can we stop for a break?” Gwen leans on her stick and her eyes jut towards the forest beside us. “I need to…”

            I tilt my head towards the forest. “Go have your bathroom break. We’ll wait.” She races off towards the woods and I call to her. “Don’t go too far!”

            She yells okay over her shoulder and then she’s gone, disappearing into the brush. Looking down at my German Shepard, I give him a smile.

            “Go keep an eye on her.” And then he’s off, sitting patiently at the treeline like a dog waiting for his master to come home.

            Marcus looks like he wants to comment but instead he leans closer to me, back on the subject of the army. “I don’t tell many people this, and not many know at the camp. But I trust you, Sloane. I can tell you’ve seen hard times and know what you’re doing.” He takes a moment to put the words together before continuing. “When the outbreak started, the military started pulling the important people from their homes and bringing them to safety compounds within the military forts. I was one of those people.”

            The sounds of twigs cracking causes him to stop.

            “We’ll continue this discussion later,” I tell him quietly. I don’t know what Marcus intends to tell me, but I refuse to let it go unsaid.

            The four of us walk, keeping a brisk but easy pace as we head through the fields. When we stop for another rest and food, I go into the forest alone, pretending to have a break but instead looking down at the map. I haven’t had much of a chance to calculate if this helps me get on my trail, but I trust that if I show it to Marcus he will know what direction to point me in. If I show him.

            “What direction are we heading?” I pretend to be curious as I keep the mental image of the map in my mind.

            “North-East.”

            Not as straight north as I’d like it to be to keep on track, but better than going south.

            “Do you think it will snow this year?” Gwen asks, changing the subject. She looks up at the gloomy, gray sky, appearing wistful.

            Marcus smiles and follows her gaze. “I don’t see why not.”

            “You would think the sky would turn burnt orange with mushroom clouds and smoke, like in all those zombie movies. Snow in a zombie apocalypse? Seems abnormal.”

            I laugh. “What about this is normal?”

            We take camp in a clearing away from any roads or signs of life. Gwen sleeps curled up next to the small fire and I brush away the angel hair sitting against her forehead. Marcus watches with a sense of warmth and takes a sip from a canteen.

            “So tell me more about this important person you are,” I question. I try to appear nonchalant about it but Marcus catches the fire in my eyes.

            “You’re awfully interested in what they’re doing. I can’t help but wonder why?” He pauses, hoping I’ll respond and then chuckles quietly when I don’t. “No, I offered to tell. No use in trying to pry. I was in University for developing some machinery for them and when people started turning, they took me and plopped me in the middle of their giant base, expecting me to work for them without any inclination of what was going on outside the walls or why. And then one night when I got up, a spark of something I had to use in my work, I heard some higher ups talking.”

            He shakes his head and covers his face with his palm. “They were using the engines I was building in their trucks so they could go out and kill survivors. They wanted everyone outside the walls of the bases to be wiped clean, to start new. They believed that it was already too late for them, that they were just as bad as those who were infected.”

            “That’s horrible,” I whisper, meeting his eyes. “But why? Why were your engines so important to them and how did you end up here, right in front of me?”

            “They didn’t run on gasoline or electricity like before. Instead they ran on sunlight and could be stored inside them weeks before used. Even on cloudy days they could collect the solar power. I thought I had made a breakthrough – something to help us survive.” He looks at me. “But I made something that just helped them kill.”

            “So you left?” I ask.

            Marcus nods. “I snuck out. No one wanted to come with me when I told them, either. They liked living in the safety of those walls and guns. Even if it meant that people outside were dying.”

            “Did you hear anything else? Anything that they were doing?”

            The fire catches in his eyes, reflecting the flames. “They said they were looking for a girl, one of the daughters of the Commander that he hadn’t seen since before the outbreak.”

            My heart skips a beat and then feels as if it’s stopped beating entirely. The Commander. Daughters. The military looking for me.

            I try not to choke on my next words. “Is the Commander the one who runs everything?” I ask. “The one who started all this?”

            Marcus doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

            I feel lightheaded and hunch forward, letting my head hang off my shoulders. For a moment, I hope it breaks off and rolls into the fire.