Survival

Part 15: Valerie

Gunshots rang out over the yard and the Changed started dropping. There were too many for whoever was shooting to kill. Surely they realised that. Abruptly, the zombies turned their heads and started keening loudly as they shambled to the house. Confused, I looked to Grace for explanation. She shrugged. I sighed and smiled reassuringly at Marcus. He gave me a small smile in response.

I heard voices, a male and a female calling each other. The male's voice sounded oddly familiar; no, surely not. I was just still too upset over losing Jeordie. I was definitely imagining things. Still, I stood and peered through the vent, just to see a girl sprint across the yard and leap into the cab of the truck. We started moving. Aluna gave me a odd look and began to giggle at the sheer madness of the situation. Grace, however, seemed preoccupied. She was whispering intensly with Marcus. His eyes were wide and he was shaking his head, hand in hair. Poor kid.

"What do we do?" I asked Aluna.

"I guess we wait for a while... Then we let her know that we're in here." Aluna grinned deviously. I noticed that brown roots were showing beneath her purple hair and her perfect bob had grown out. She looked decidedly less like a space ranger, but thankfully she was still wearing the bright nylon and knee high Converse.

"Dude, do you have any more hair dye?" I asked her.

"Yeah, it should be in my pack somewhere. Why, am I getting regrowth?"

"Yup. I'll give it a trim and a colour if you want."

"Oh, no," She laughed. "That's Marcus' job."

The boy looked up at the mention of his name.

"I was just telling Valerie here that you're my official hairdresser. I think I need you to fix my hair up again." She smiled kindly at him.

"Oh, okay Aluna! Whenever you want." Marcus said shyly.

Aluna's smile turned sad when he looked away. She pitied him. We all did. This was almost impossible for us, fully functioning teenagers, but for a developmentally challenged kid? What kind of chance did he have, especially if something did happen to us?

--

Almost ten minutes passed before Aluna began kicking the side of the van. I joined in, banging at the cab. The truck slowed and came to a stop. We heard a door open.

Grace stood as soon as the footsteps hit the gravel road and crunched over to the back of the van. She seemed so pent up that I wouldn't have been surprised if she bolted the instant the door opened. Turns out, she did.

Right into the arms of the girl that rolled the door up.

The girl squealed in fear, but once she realised who was embracing her, made a sound of joy.

I looked to Aluna. She shrugged, smiled, and continued watching Grace. The girls had burst into tears and were talking quietly with their foreheads pressed together. I knew who it was.

"Hi Paz!" I smiled at her. The new girl looked up, teary faced with joy, and waved.

Marcus, Aluna and I stepped out of the van.

"I hate to ruin your reunion, girls, but I think we'd best be gone." Aluna said, nodding down the road.

"Okay. What's the plan?" Paz asked. There was no doubt in her voice that she was sticking with us, and no doubt in our minds that we would let her.

"We're making our way to Queensland. Taking back ways and moving inland to avoid the coast and denser populations. We're hoping to find an island on the Great Barrier Reef." Aluna said.

"To be safe!" Marcus put in, nodding importantly.

"That's right, Marcus. We'll be safe." Grace smiled to him.

"Paz, we have to ask you. Were you alone?" Aluna asked.

Paz looked to me. Something in her eyes hardened.

"Yes." She stated in an odd voice.

My stomach dropped with disappointment. While I knew I must have been imagining Jeordie's voice, there was a part of me that wished it had been real.

--

We decided that Paz, Grace and Marcus would sleep in the back of the truck while Aluna and I took turns driving. I sat in the passenger seat as Aluna started the engine and moved the truck forward.

"Can you get that map out? It should be in my bag." Aluna asked.

I looked. It wasn't in the bag.

"You sure it's in here?" I asked her.

Aluna's brown furrowed in thought. She exhaled angrily and slapped the steering wheel.

"I must've dropped it when I ran into the back. We'll have to just follow the signs I suppose."

I nodded, still disappointed about my wild hope being fruitful.

"Valerie?" Aluna put a hand on my thigh. I looked up at her. "I'm sure Jeordie's in a better place." It took me a moment to realise what she was saying.

"Jeordie is not dead!" I hissed at her.

"Valerie... He jumped off a cliff. Even if he survived that, so many Changed went down with him."

I refused to believe it, so I did what any mature person does; sulked.

The silence in the cab was like a suffocating blanket.

"I've had to live thinking he was dead long before all this happened." I whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"He was depressed."

"Ah."

Aluna sighed and ran a hand through her hair. She knew what was coming. I tried to stop the words from spilling out but they came anyway.

"I never knew what to say," I confessed. "Honestly, I knew how he felt. And if a human is in that much pain, isn't it their right to end their own life? Who am I to deny them that? I was just too selfish. So I talked him out of it. It would take hours, days, weeks even, when the episodes were particularly bad..." I trailed off. "Sorry. I get overly emotional."

"It's alright Val. And, for the record, it was the right thing to not leave him alone when he felt like that." Aluna put a hand on my leg comfortingly.

I gave her the biggest smile I could muster, which was probably more like a grimace.

--

We stopped multiple times, as Marcus was carsick. Aluna took a few wrong turns, and in the end we pulled over by the roadside to sleep. I was on first watch.

As the others snuggled into their beds in the truck, I sat on the roof and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. The moon was bright and I soon could see fairly well. That's when I noticed the truck up the street. From what I could see in the darkness, it was a ute. There was movement in the driver's seat. I slid down from the roof and looked around cautiously before jogging to the car. I peered through the drivers side window.

A man lay there with a knife in his chest. Fresh blood poured from the wound. He looked to me, chest heaving in pain. His eyes were wide with terror and his mouth opened silently, forming silent words, blood trickling from his lips.

I stood in shock, watching him die. The guilt of not doing anything was overwhelming, but I simply couldn't act. I was frozen. My body only stirred when the man stopped breathing. I realised that I had been holding my breath the whole time, and took my next gulp of air as he let go of his last.

Horrified, I turned away and walked back to the ute. As I left I saw a shape in the truck bed. A dead dog. I shivered.

Even if the world survived this, it would never be the same again.

And I wasn't sure if the change would be anything positive.