Life After the Undead (Completed)

PART 12: The Lost Ones .2

Will's P.O.V.

The plan was simple.

Wait until it got dark.

Sneak out.

Start a new life very far away from here.

See, simple right? Yeah I thought so, except I told Rebecca I wasn't feeling well. I figured this would give me some alone time. I'd get to stay in my room, pretend to sleep, but instead be packing the important stuff. Problem was, Rebecca then decided she wanted to be my personal nurse. And well... with what I was planning I was feeling a little sentimental.

I mean, setting out on my own, it was a big deal.

I hadn't even set out on my own before the apocalypse started, I was living at home. And even during the apocalypse I wasn't alone for long. I banded with Melissa's crew almost right away.

Though at that point it was Jordan's crew originally... before the zombies got him. Then Chris was in charge, but someone mistook him for a zombie and shot him... let's just say we had a lot of leaders before Melissa stepped up and kept the title, and by then there were only 7 of the original 15 left.

Yeah our group wasn't the best at this whole surviving thing. But you get what I mean.

Rebecca had been with me from the very beginning and I had loved her once. Or... well I loved having sex with her. But now that I was leaving I felt a little bad about it. Especially since she was not coming with me.

I couldn't help myself from sleeping with her one last time. Just to tide me over since I had no idea when the next time I would see a girl was.

Jack had stopped by today simply to tell me that he had gotten me and Keith a place in the Drifters up in Timmins. It was colder there, less zombies but life was also a lot like living in a frontier town. He had gotten friends up there to agree to take both me and Keith and since this had to be a secret operation he was going to have one of his guys pick us up outside of the Shady house in the dead of night.

Did I have to sneak out in the dead of night? Yes and no. No because I was my own man and I could make my own decisions. And Yes, because if I told people I was leaving, Rebecca would pitch a fit until I agreed to stay and I didn't want to deal with that. I wanted to leave, live my own life, start over... far, far away from her.

Was Evelyn aware that we were leaving? Honestly, I had no idea. I mean, she had given me the frequency and I had a feeling she knew a lot more than she let on, but she hadn't said anything outright.

She did hug both Keith and I after dinner that night which was something she never did.

Normally Evelyn didn't touch us, she didn't like physical contact so she avoided it if necessary. Seriously, giving her a high-five was a painfully awkward situation. You'd go high five and she'd just stare at you as if decided if she was going to do it or not. So far the only person who had managed to high five her was Melissa. And the only person who ever got hugs from her was Godrick and only when she thought none of us were looking.

Did I feel bad that I was leaving the way I was? Well yeah. Sort of. I felt bad because I was leaving without saying goodbye to Melissa, and she deserved that in the least. I felt bad because everyone was going to have to deal with Rebecca's freak out tomorrow morning. But I had left Melissa a letter and there was nothing I could do about Rebecca's freak out so my conscience was assuaged of those tidbits of guilt.

Was I nervous about what I was about to do? Hell yeah. Why wouldn't I be? I was about to strike out on my own, even if I was going with Keith, we had never been without a group before, and until we made it up to our own Drifter encampment, we would be pretty much on our own.

But the clock hit 2am, and I slipped out from the bed where I had ended up with Rebecca. I really shouldn't have slept with her the night before I left, but I figured it was the only way to kind of make up for abandoning her. You know, giving her one last night of passion, one last night where I acted like the good husband I was supposed to be and not the jerk who was going to abandon her.

I got myself back into my clothes, slipped into my room to retrieve the backpack I had packed and then headed down the stairs where Keith was waiting for me.

"Damn, what took you so long?" he hissed when I got close. I wasn't even that late, like five minutes tops. "I was worried that when you went to bed with Rebecca you had changed your mind."

"No, we're doing this. We need to do this. Are you ready?"

Keith offered him his jacket and while he put it on, Keith got his boots on. Once they had everything on, I turned to him. "Did you get it?"

"Yeah, got it off of her this afternoon," he said brandishing the small garage remote. Except this one wasn't for the garage it was for the drawbridge.

"Do you think she noticed?"

The she was Evelyn, it was her remote after all. It had been Keith's job to swipe it. We could have asked her for it, but again, since we were being secretive about this, we were a little worried about her spilling the beans.

Not that she would have done it maliciously, Evelyn just didn't care.

"If she did, she would have said something. It's not like her to just ignore us stealing something."

Well that was true. And it wasn't like they were going to keep it, they'd be leaving it somewhere where she could find it in the morning.

Keith opened the door the door and together we walked out, stomped our way through the snow. We got to the drawbridge and Keith pressed the button. Together we watched it lower and once it was down. The drawbridge was loud going down, or at least the mechanism that operated it was. I had oiled it that morning hoping that would have quieted it, and while it kind of did, in the dead of night, to my worried ears it practically screamed what we were doing.

We both stared at the house, waiting to see if any lights would flip on but it seemed to not have woken up anyone.

We moved to cross quickly, but once I put my feet on that creaking wood it hit me once more that I was really doing this. I was I going to leave all I knew behind. And even in an apocalypse when I had more to worry about, it was still a scary thing to do.

But Keith was far from nervous apparently. He walked right across that bridge like he didn't have a worry in the world. Clearly ready for the next part of the adventure.

I followed after him and then waited, watching as he picked a place to put the remote. He settled on sort of rolling a ball of snow and placing it on top so she could find it.

The second he was done doing that a drifter jeep drove up. It parked in front of us and the windows rolled down. "You two got the package we're picking up?" the passenger asked.

"We are the package," I told him and they exchanged glances.

"Evelyn's never shipped people before," the passenger said.

"I'm the new mechanic, and Keith is gonna be the new Tech man. We're supposed be going up to Timmins."

"Yeah? You settling in Timms? Good luck with that," the driver said and then the door opened. "Well hurry up and get in, you shmucks."

I didn't quite like how they put that but I decided to ignore it. We got in the jeep, and then we were on the road. This was the first step to freedom, and the farther away I got from the Shady House, the less worried about it I was, and the more excited I became.

They'd understand.

Or at least Melissa was.

I was going off and doing my own thing. Living my life. I felt like I was being reborn and in a world like ours, that was a precious commodity.