Ophelia Read online

  The 6:00 a.m. church bells signaled the opportunity I was looking for. With all the Crazies charging towards the source of the bells, it was prime time to search the cars again, with fuel being the goal.

  I leaned forward and shook my mother awake.

  “Mom, I kept watch.”

  She seemed alarmed and disappointed in herself that she’d fallen asleep, but I stopped her before she could say anything.

  “Doesn't matter. Can you keep watch now while Clyde and I go look for gas?”

  She nodded groggily, ashamed.

  I gently removed the small limbs draped over my lap and hopped out, bat and pack in hand. I closed the door without making too much noise and waking the twins.

  I opened the door to wake Clyde up and found him awake, with his eyes closed and a barely suppressed smile on his face.

  This idiot was pretending to be asleep.

  What a five-year-old.

  I didn’t know whether to be weirded out, concerned, or jealous. It was an odd thing. I mean, we were almost two weeks into the Apocalypse here. How did he have any sort of sense of humor left?

  I need to ask him later. And hopefully, there would be a later.

  Well, if he was going to act like one, I was going to treat him like one, so I pinched his ear between my finger and thumb and pulled him out of the Wrangler.

  “Okay, okay! I'm up! I'm awake! Jeez...” He held up his hands, laughing his head off.

  It was, at the same time, annoying and unbelievable.

  “Let's go. We're burning daylight.”

  That five-year-old just smiled and reached past me to retrieve his pack from the floor. With him being that close, I was reminded that he was in dire need of some soap. When he got out of the way, I started walking.

  “Hey, I think I left something back in the car.” “Clyde said, “Can we start there?” My bag seemed heavier at the thought of going back in that direction. I hiked it up and adjusted the straps.

  “Yeah, yeah sure. Just be quick.”

  Although, the more I thought about it, the more I did not want to go back there. I knew what would be on the other side of that SUV. Just because it would be obscured from my vision, didn't mean it wasn't there.

  Finding the car out of the hundreds of other cars was easy. I just followed the scent of blood and decay that emitted from a few yards away by the tree line. I avoided looking at anything in that direction while Clyde searched the seats.

  “Oh, hey, I wanted to give you these.” I pulled off my pack and rummaged around before pulling out the rest of the jerky. I had tried a bit during my watch last night, which only reinforced my decision that they would be better off with Clyde. Man, he must’ve had a stomach of pure iron.

  His face lit up once again, and I leaned across the seat to hand it to him. His hands were cold when they brushed against mine. He quickly shoved the bag of jerky in his pocket and I went back to leaning against the door, arms folded over my chest, and not looking behind me, towards the remains of the man I’d killed.

  “Found it!” With pride, the man from the south held up a small rabbits foot on a chain.

  I didn't ask if it was real or not.

  “Let's go get you folks some fuel now.”

  Clyde told me about how when he was scouting the place before we got here, he thought he remembered seeing a landscaping truck. There were a couple of cars unlocked, but not much was to be found in them. He had the same trouble we did, with most of the cars that were unlocked having a layer of blood that coated everything on the inside. The SUV he’d been camped out in offered the most room, that was also unlocked, and had no blood.

  I asked him why he hadn't chosen the limo, the one that was around where we’d found my family.

  He shrugged, “It wasn't unlocked.”

  The landscaping truck he’d thought he saw was indeed a landscaping truck. Complete with cut stones to frame a flower bed, and the flowers themselves, long dead, of course. Everything was dead or dying nowadays. But I did grin at Clyde when I saw the hose on the bed. Now I'll be the first to say that I don't know much about siphoning gas, but I know that a hose plays an important part in it.

  I was about to stroll right up to it and check it out, but Clyde shot out his arm and completely clotheslined me. Like a mom would do to you if you're sitting in the passenger seat and she breaks quickly.

  Eww... He just pulled a mom move...

  Two nanoseconds later, I saw why. A Crazy, small and fast, came sprinting into the circle of cars we were at the edge of. It paused, let out a quiet squawk— it's version of a Crazy’s signature shriek— and then kept running towards the bells, arms stuck to its sides.

  I let myself breathe again.

  After the whole oxygen program had resumed again, I realized Clyde's arm still hadn't moved from my chest.

  “I hate Crazies.” I announced, and ducked under his rigid arm, like I was cheating at limbo. “I hate them all.”

  And I did. Why couldn't this just be a good old fashioned society collapsing kind of apocalypse?

  Because screw you, that's why, is what the Apocalypse would respond.

  I don't think Clyde registered the whole arm thing like I did. He seemed too spooked about that too-close encounter. He did snap back to reality at my announcement though.

  “Crazies?” He asked, almost as though he’d never heard of the name I’d made up only days ago.

  Psh. The nerve...

  “It's what I call... the infected. The-them. Whatever they are. Crazies.”

  Because when I first met one, he tried to kill me and succeeded in killing my sixteen-year-old coworker. I thought he was crazy or hyped-up on drugs, and I'm still freaking out about it, over a week later, so please don't ask.

  Crack!

  “I've been calling them Sticks.”

  Huh?

  He saw my look and explained, “You know, because of the way they run.”

  He dramatically slapped his arms to his sides, and performed a spitting imitation of a Crazy— or Stick— running, his shoulders getting that slight shimmy just right.

  I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it, the combination of no sleep and the fact that Clyde was such a big guy. Somewhere around six feet, tanned from spending so much of his life outside, and, well, muscly. If that's even a word. Muscly... muscled? Whatever. The point is that it was freakin’ hilarious in my dehydrated, sleep-deprived mind.

  There were tears in my eyes, and I was way past the appropriate amount of laughing time for that joke. He looked concerned, as well as incredibly uncomfortable.

  “It's- it's not you.” I said. “It's...”

  What was it? Stress? Lack of water? Lack of sleep? Crack! Take your pick of any of the traumatizing things that'd happened to me.

  “I think everything's just catching up to me, you know?” I was crying and laughing at the same time and probably looked like a Crazy.

  “Hey... hey, it's all right.” He came back to the edge of the clearing and put his arm around me in a somewhat comforting, but mostly awkward, way. “I mean, you're only, what, sixteen, right? It's a lot of stress.”

  I stopped my manic laughing/crying and started to calm myself down. I also didn't correct him when he guessed my age wrong by over two years, because the look on the creeper's face when I’d told him I was sixteen was seared into my brain.

  Not that I thought that Clyde was that kind of guy, but... you just never know. It was... It was better this way.

  I took in a deep breath, filling my lungs to capacity and then some.

  “Okay. Okay, I'm good. I'm sorry, I'm...” I'm good. I'm fine. I'm good. I'm fine. I am good, and I am fine.

  “Let's just get the gas. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can be on the road and the sooner I can have a chance of sleeping.”

  For a moment, I felt like I shouldn't be out here. I felt like it was too big of a risk and that disaster was surely to happen. I mean, how come I didn't see that lone Crazy, and Clyde did? Sure, he's w
ay taller than me, and probably caught a glimpse of it before I could, but the self-doubt was still there.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I glared at him.

  “And quit calling me ma’am.”

  I wasn't quite sure why it bothered me, but it did, and that's all that matters. Are you even supposed to call people younger than you ma’am?

  “Alright... O? What does that stand for anyway?”

  He jumped onto the truck bed, using his hands to propel himself on it. He turned around, but before he could be a gentleman, and offer me his hand, I copied his movements and stood up beside him. Less gracefully as he did, I'll admit, but the end result was the same. Mostly. Kinda.

  “I'll tell you later.” Like I wanted to talk about my weird name. Hmph.

  He crouched down and started guessing on the measurements of how much hose we should use. When he was satisfied, he began cutting with the same knife he’d held to my throat yesterday. Boy, what fast friends we’d become. Only, I wouldn't have used the word friend, because I was still kind of waiting for him to screw us over.

  I went over to the other stuff in the truck and checked it out. The dead flowers were useless. The water bottle tucked into the corner would be helpful. The shovel could also prove to be a handy thing to have. So I shoved one in my bag and carried the other in the hand that didn't have my bat, so that the metal-on-metal sound didn't ring out and attract Crazies.

  I looked back at Clyde, and saw he was stuffing several different lengths of hose into his mostly empty pack, and left one in front of him. The rifle’s strap began to slide off of his shoulder, and he readjusted it. He jumped down from the truck and offered me his hand. This time, I took it.

  “Have you done this kind of thing before?” I asked.

  He pulled out an empty two-liter pop bottle that he must’ve gotten from the trunk we’d found my mom in. I hadn't even thought to bring or look for a container. Good thinking, Clyde.

  “Siphon gas? Sure, lots of times.”

  He said it so nonchalantly, it couldn't have possibly been for illegal stuff, right?

  “For the mower, or our wheelers, stuff like that. The nearest gas station wasn't around the corner, like in the city.”

  Oh.

  “So, I must seem like a real city slicker to you, right?”

  That joke was so lame Ophelia.

  I cringed at my own words.

  He found a car he liked, about halfway between the landscaping truck and our Jeep, and kneeled on one knee after opening the gas cap.

  “Yeah. Cause city slickers are the only ones I've actually heard use the term city slicker”

  Double oh.

  He unscrewed the bottle cap, put one end of the tube in the tank and the other in his mouth. The next thing I knew, gas was spilling into the bottle and he was whipping his head to the side, spitting fuel out of his mouth. The gasoline splattered across the pavement, which was just beginning to glow from the rising sun. He fixed his hair as the bottle quickly filled. He smiled up at me, obviously proud of this major contribution.

  “We’ll have to get a few of these if we want to get anywhere,” he said. “I'll take this back to the Jeep. You wanna search the trunk back there again for more containers?”

  He got up and screwed the cap back on, cradling the bottle in his elbow, like a baby or a pet. The extra hoses poured out of the the top of his pack while the one he’d just used was coiled around his arm.

  “Yeah, sounds like a good idea.” It made sense, because what's the point of walking back and forth and back and forth from car to Jeep from car to Jeep?

  “Hey, take this.” I handed him the shovel, and cringed at the clanking sound when the metal hit my bat.

  He took it, but looked skeptical as he readjusted the strap of his rifle. “Your knife’s too short, and your gun’s too loud.” I added.

  I shrugged. He shrugged. And we went our separate ways. The thought of him backstabbing us still tugged at the back of my mind. I stopped walking.

  “Clyde?” I turned around. He turned around. We were stopped just over a car length away from each other.

  “Yeah?” He had the two liter bottle in one arm, and the shovel in the other hand. It looked like, for a second, that he was heading to a really messed up party.

  “Why are you helping us out so much?”

  I had to put it out there, before I let him go back, alone, to my mom, my little brother, and my littler sister. He raised his eyebrows, and I saw a ghost of a smile on his face as he answered.

  “Well, yesterday I woke up with no food, no means of transportation, except my own two feet, and no plan to get where I'm goin’. Then, you folks show up out of the blue and offer me all of that. So, why not do what I can, you know?”

  Chapter 12: Lucky

  I started at the junk food car, which I knew to be unlocked, but there was nothing left in it but a fuzzy M&M which, after much internal debate, I decided on not eating. I bet Clyde would’ve eaten it, if I dared him. He seemed like that sort of guy, so I shoved it in my pocket.

  Looking out and across the median, at the cars heading south, there wasn't much to look at. The jam was everybody that was heading north, and away from whichever city was behind us. But what I did see can only be described as a stroke of luck.

  A van, one of those creeper ones typically used for luring children in with candy. It was white one with no windows, and had a couple things strapped to its roof with ropes and bungee cords. One of those things secured was gasoline. As in, real gas cans, not just two liter bottles.

  It wasn't even a decision to make. I hopped the concrete divider, using two hands, instead of swinging one leg over, then the other, which was pretty cool in my book, and jogged over to the van. I tugged on the handle just out of habit, but this one was predictably locked.

  There wasn't a ladder. You’d have thought that there would’ve been, but there wasn't. So I scurried, yes, scurried, up the hood and windshield of the van, not as gracefully as I’d seen in my head, but graceful enough so that I didn't fall off.

  How embarrassing would that be?

  The white van had three gas cans— two smaller ones I didn't know the size of and a five gallon one that had a big five on the side. One of the little ones and the big one were completely full, and the last one had about half of its contents missing. I undid the first bungee cord just fine and stuffed it in my bag to use for something later, because who couldn't use an elastic cord in the Apocalypse, right? The second one, however, slipped from my grasp and nailed my finger.

  But I didn't notice the pain. In fact, I didn't notice the cord at all. Not when it almost amputated my fingers, and not when it hit the ground with a soft clink. I didn't notice these things because of what’d made me lose my grip in the first place.

  Two Crazies. One who used to be a man and one who used to be a woman, who were just there. Out of nowhere. Their chins pointed upward, as if sniffing the air. I quickly dropped down so that I was laying on my belly instead of kneeling on one knee.

  Oh no... How much noise did I make? Is their sense of smell heightened? Can they climb? Can they get to me?

  Their heads whipped towards me.

  Can they smell fear?

  I got as low and as small as I possibly could. You've could've taken a rolling pin to me and there wouldn't have been a difference. I hoped that I would blend in and hide amongst the other suitcases and bags strapped up here. I could still kind of see the one, through a slit between the roof and a bag propped up by the rack. I wondered if it would be able to see me.

  The silence was deafening, and for there to be silence, there had to be no other noise.

  Which meant no church bells.

  So, all of the Crazies attracted to that one location will quickly be dispersed in all directions, and my direction counted as one of those.

  I had to move. I could, probably, take out one, but two?

  Two??

  They were circling the van now, waiting for me to make a mistake. And the
second, the very second I did, I knew that they would do everything in their power to alert the others nearby with a head-splitting demonic shriek of dinner is served!

  I had to do something. I had to do something now! Okay... Now! Wait for it... now!

  But my body wouldn't do anything. So I took a deep breath in... out... in... out....

  Now.

  Just like that, I went into ninja mode— which, honestly, was a mode I didn't even think I had, like when a grandparent discovers airplane mode or something. I leapt off of the roof, bat clutched in both hands, and totally took out the female one. Like, bam! The metal collided with her forehead, and she was down. It was pretty cool.

  But then I collided with the ground, which wasn’t so cool. My bat rolled out of my hands, and I reached for a knife, the one I’d given back to Clyde. It might as well been miles away. It wouldn’t‘ve mattered, because the Crazy was already there, looming above me, blocking out the sun which had reached a point above the tree line. I was on the ground, and at this point, no melee weapon in the world could’ve saved me.

  This is it.

  But it wasn't it. There was a smashing sound, and the Crazy went down. I had to scramble out of the way to avoid being crushed by the corpse, or it just touching me at all.

  I looked up, and saw the silhouette of Clyde gripping the shovel tightly and breathing heavily. His hair was askew again, and the rifle had fallen off his shoulder and was at his elbow. He offered me a hand, and this time, I took it gratefully. Instead of letting go, he pulled me to him in a hug, a quick one, but one nonetheless. Both of our hearts were pounding.

  That was too close. Far too close.

  “Um... thanks.” Real smooth, Ophelia. This guy just saved your life, dude.

  But my awkwardness was his amusement, and he breathed out a quiet laugh as he readjusted his rifle back up to his shoulder.

  “Don't mention it.”

  There was an exchange of nods, more awkwardness, and more silence. Then, I retrieved my bat, and gathered two sheets of newspaper. I handed him one, then proceeded to wipe the blood off of my bat, making sure none of it touched me. He followed my actions.