Zevolution, A.J. Cole [free ebook reader for iphone .txt] 📗

cans from the shelf, and then moved further down the aisle to see if I could find stuff that had been sealed well enough to survive two years without getting wormy and stuff.

“Are you alone?”

He was back. I hoped he wasn’t going to keep following me. That creeped me out. “Yeah. You?”

“No, there are about eight of us.”

Vienna sausages. I hated Vienna sausages. Not only did they taste gross, but they looked like tiny…wait. “Eight? That’s a lot. How did you all survive?”

“We’ve been moving around for the past two years, never staying long enough in one place to be tracked.”

That was one of my avoidance techniques, too. “Yep. Did the same.”

“Would you like to hang out with us? Safety in numbers and all that.”

“Not really. No offense. Unless you guys want pointers on avoiding the z, but it looks like you’ve got that figured out already.” I flashed a brief smile and headed into the next aisle. Jars. Good. Glass kept things well.

A lot of them had either fallen or been thrown to the floor, and I had a hard time not stepping on shards that would have pierced the soles of my shoes. But the ones way at the back were still intact. I reached in and snagged a jar of – hearts of palm? Huh? Oh, well. Why not?

“I don’t feel right about letting you go off by yourself again,” the guy said, once again behind me.

This was getting tedious, and not a little freaky. “I’ll be fine. I survived all this time without you guys. I’m pretty sure I can keep myself safe.”

“Okay. Hey, have you seen anything odd lately?”

“Like a talking zombie?”

“A what? Holy cow, you saw one that could talk?”

Aw, heck. Why had I said that? Stupid, stupid, stupid. I knew better than to make assumptions.

“That’s it – now you have to come back with me and talk to the others!”

“No I don’t.”

“Aw, come on. Do you know that this means?”

I had an idea, of course, which I explained already, but I so didn’t feel like even being around this guy, never mind having a council meeting with his buddies. “Yeah. I do. I’m done here. See ya.”

He zoomed around and blocked me. Great.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not going to hurt you, and neither are my friends. But this is huge! We’d been speculating about what the next step in zombie evolution might be, and now you’ve proven us right! They are evolving!”

Yes, but it seems you haven’t. “So what? From what I saw, he didn’t look like he was ready to find religion or anything.”

“All right, look. Describe him to me, and I’ll let you pass.”

“I’ll describe him, and you’ll let me pass or I’ll merge one of these cans with your head.”

“I have a gun.”

“Well, I don’t…fine.” I cleared my throat. “He was dressed in a business suit, and said, ‘yes. Good thing.’ That was it. Then he wandered off.”

“You’re sure about that?”

As sure as I am that my foot and your crotch are about to have a meet-and-greet. “Of course I’m sure.”

“Okay.” He stood to the side and waved at me to go past.

To my surprise, he didn’t grab me as I went by. When I was near the door he called, “What’s your name?”

“Zara.”

“Cool. Nice to meet you Zara. Stay safe.”

So he thought my name was cool. Maybe he wasn’t such a dweeb after all.

 

2

 

 

There’s a lot to be said about no government. Because of the way things happened, we managed to avoid anarchy – probably because the people who would have gone all anarchic…al…ish – hadn’t lived long enough to cause it. Wait. Did that make sense? Sometimes I don’t know. I mean, I write this stuff, and then re-read it, and go, “Huh?”

In case whoever is reading this hasn’t figured it out, this is my journal. Not a typical one, to be sure. It’s me scribbling crap down on whatever paper I can find, holding it together with binder clips that I found in an office supply store, and toting it around with me in my handy-dandy backpack. Speaking of the office supply store, I still haven’t figured out why the place had been ransacked in the first place.

Maybe lots of other survivors, back when there were lots of other survivors, had snagged all the notebooks so they could write journals about what was going on. Who knows? All I can say is that by the time I found the place, all the notebooks, most of the paper, and pretty much all the writing implements were long gone. So were all the office break-room supplies, like coffee, coffee creamer, coffee makers, those peanut-butter cheese crackers that looked like they were manufactured in the remains of Three Mile Island, napkins, plasticware, all that. Which wasn’t a surprise. I knew the crackers and the rest of that stuff had once been there because the shelf labels said so.

Over the years, I did find a number of pens on the street, in the pocket protectors of dead nerds, and in a few convenient stores, so I had plenty to write with…with which to write? Aw, who cares? I liked that house with the attic as a place to do most of my writing, and was hoping to catch another glimpse of a chatty zombie, to be honest. But months passed and I didn’t see another one.

However. Yeah. Seems I started the proverbial ball rolling when I told Chubby Guy about it. I ran into him and a couple of his friends about four months later, when I went into a clothing store several blocks away. The weather was getting a teensy bit warmer, and I needed something less bulky to wear. Oh, and new shoes. A side-symptom of zombie apocalypses (is that a word?) is the huge amount of broken glass in the streets, and after a while, that wreaks havoc on the soles of your footwear.

So there I was, eying a likely cardigan, a pair of ankle boots in one hand, when I heard that old familiar greeting from days of yore:

“You! Stop right there!”

For real, dude? Was that something he and his friends had agreed on as their standard greeting? I sighed and turned around.

“It’s you!”

“If it isn’t,” I told him, after treating him to some serious eye-rolling, “someone has a lot of explaining to do. Why did you tell me to stop, by the way? I wasn’t even moving.”

“He says that to everyone,” said a girl standing next to him.

“Whatever. Listen, I’m getting tired of the pronouns. What’s your name? I believe I told you mine.”

“Zara?”

“Yup.”

“Chet.”

“Chet. That’s short for Chester, right? Like the Cheetah?”

The eye-rolling was returned in kind.

“He gets that a lot – or used to,” said the girl. “I’m his sister, Francine.”

“Nice to meet you. There still eight of you?”

Chet and Francine (that’s so much better than “they” or “she and the guy,” don’t you think?) exchanged a look.

“I take it you lost someone?” As I said this, I kicked off my old shoes, sat on the floor, and pulled on the boots, ignoring the lovely aroma of unwashed socks.

“Two,” Chet said. “They were the ones who knew how to use guns, so the rest of us have had to learn.”

“Learn? Learn what? How not to shoot yourself in the foot? Just point and pull the trigger. Zombies aren’t exactly hard to hit.” I stood up and took a few steps. The boots were almost a perfect fit. Awesome.

“Maybe not before, but things have changed.”

I gaped. “Wait. Have you seen any of the talking ones?”

Francine nodded, casting a quick sideways glance at Chet. “A bunch. And they wear clothes. We’ve been following them to see what they’re up to.”

“Clothes are a definite improvement,” Chet muttered, followed by “Hey!” when his sister punched him in the arm.

“They’re getting faster,” she told me. “That’s the main thing. I mean, they don’t, like, jump around or anything, but they’ve learned how to run.”

“Regular run, or spastic run?”

“Somewhere in between. And if they’re chasing you, they say stuff like, ‘Good stuff!’ and ‘Need that!’ It’s bizarre.”

Ya think? “Sounds like they’re referring to us as food.”

“Not always.”

The three of us turned to the right, as someone else joined us. He looked like he was in his thirties, not very tall, but totally buff. His head was shaved, and he had a snaggly beard and mustache. “Sometimes they seem to be talking about things they’ve found.”

“Zara, this is one of our friends.” Chet gave the guy a smile. “Uh, this is the girl who first saw one of the Talkers.”

Aw. They’d given them a name. Definitely a former basement-dweller, this Chet character. Sheesh.

“Yeah, you made quite an impression on the Chetster here,” said New Guy.

“The Ch…okay. And you are?”

“Sorry. Hi. I’m Stalker.”

Sounded like I wasn’t the only one making up names. “Stalker. Should I be alarmed?”

He laughed. “Nah. It’s a new world, sweetheart. Words can mean something different now. In my case, it refers to someone who hunts the Z.”

Did I mention that I can’t stand cutesy abbreviations for things? Or being called “sweetheart” by strangers? No? So I’m mentioning it now. Acronyms set my teeth on edge, too. Maybe I have a condition. Whatever. I could do self-therapy and start an Apocalypse Dictionary to help me cope with the sudden urge to strangle everyone who used words like “the Z,” and “Talkers.” Or I could just grow up and get over it.

“Where are the rest of your friends?” I figured I should change the subject as a way to institute my new attitude.

“Back at the house.” Stalker…sorry, but that stupid name will never sound okay…lifted a bag he was holding. “Got a few things we need. We really should head back. Wanna come with us?”

“No, but thanks.” I removed the cardigan from its hanger and draped it over my arm. I still have some shopping to do.”

Stalker burst out laughing, further alarming my sense of personal safety. “That’s sweet! Ha! Shopping! How old are you, hon?”

“I’ll tell you if you promise not to use any more condescending names.”

He looked confused for a second. “I – oh! Hey, it’s just how I talk, but sure. No problem…Zara.”

“I’m seventeen.”

He nodded. “I bet you clean up real good.”

I bet you let your butt crack show when you crouch down to strip dead bodies. “I suspect we all do. Well, gotta go. Nice meeting you, Francine. Er, Stalker.” I cleared my throat in what was intended as a meaningful way, and went off to the other side of the store.

Distraction during a zombie apocalypse can be fatal. One of the things I’d disciplined myself to do was be on my guard at all times. Vigilance, being aware of everything around you, these were the tools that kept one from getting chomped on.

I only mention this because as I wandered away from Chet and Co., I was thinking about what they’d said regarding the new and improved version of our old enemy. In other words, I was distracted.

“Need good!”

Oh, crap. I stopped and whirled around. Yup. Zombie in a – oh, good god on a surf board – a bikini?! You know, if the thing had once been a woman, I might have accepted what I was seeing, but this was,