Scorched Earth

The muscles in Garrett’s arms hurt as he heaved himself up from the ground, not bothering to wipe the dirt off of his shorts before turning back to Melanie. She was getting better with every passing day.

“Okay, that was good. But try and hit lower. You knocked the breath out of me, but the Infected don’t really breathe, so that won’t be a good tactic. Try again.”

She smirked at him and Garrett instantly regretted it as he felt the stick hit his shins, sending him back down on the ground. He knew without looking that his lower body was covered in bruises, and new welts were forming on his chest to match. It hurt now but every second of pain was worth the confidence in the way Melanie held her weapon and her perfect stance. They’d spent hours the previous day on trusting her instincts, Garrett trying to teach her everything he’d learned over the past years in only a few days.

When they first started, Garrett worried about how he was going to teach her. Most of his fighting skills were purely instinctual, pulled from years of running and constantly looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t sure how that was going to translate to an empty lot in the back of the camp and a dull walking stick, but he knew they had to start somewhere. He wasn’t sure that his teaching methods were the best, but if he had to withstand a few days of aches and bruises then it was worth it.

Melanie wasn’t a slow learner. Garrett’s initial thoughts had been right: she was quick and fierce. With the passing hours he was warming more and more up to the idea of having her at his back. He didn’t know what they were going to find beyond the walls of the encampment, how much had changed in the time since he’d first arrived, but he wanted to be prepared.

A hard strike against his ribs caught his breath in his throat and Garrett stepped back, wheezing. He sent a glare in Melanie’s direction but she didn’t return it with her usual smirk or smile. Her feet were set for another blow and her hands gripped the stick so hard Garrett could see her knuckles turning white.

“Come on.”

But Garrett didn’t egg her on as usual. Instead he stepped forward, placing his hands over hers.

“I need you to relax your grip. Tightening up like this isn’t going to help you at all. You need control over your weapon, but don’t strangle it.”

She nodded, slowly loosening her grip, and Garrett sighed, rubbing his forehead with the collar of his shirt. He was covered in mud and dirt and he knew that he was in for a world of pain the next morning.

“Why don’t we just stop for the day? I’ve waited months to try and get out of here. Another day won’t kill me.

But Melanie didn’t move. “No. I need to do this right.”

“You sure?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. The more time he spent with her, Garrett realized she was more like him than he wanted to admit. She was endlessly stubborn, and her resolve unyielding but that just made him work harder.

She just nodded again, straightening her stance and bending slightly at her knees.

Garrett had been asleep for what only felt like ten minutes when he felt a weight at the end of his bunk and a hand shaking him awake.

“Go away.” He mumbled into his pillow, begging his eyes to stay closed. But Kennedy was persistent.

Garrett cracked his eyes to find his friend at the end of his bed, struggling with what looked like a large duffel bag filled with papers. “What do you need right this second, that couldn’t have waited until I woke up next week?”

“We need to know where we’re headed.” Kennedy said simply, getting up in order to dump out the bag onto Garrett’s bed before sitting down again.

Garrett groaned, knowing he wasn’t going to be back asleep anytime soon. It had been something he was avoiding. He knew they had to leave and he had a pretty good idea what they were going to need and what they were going to face, but he hadn’t given any thought to where they were going.

“Can’t this wait? Don’t we need to figure out other things? And we should get as much sleep now as possible, you know, to uh…save up our energy.”

Looking hopefully over at Kennedy, he was met with an amused smile. “That can wait, Princess. Right now we’ve gotta figure this out. We can’t exactly pack without knowing what we need to pack for.”

Sighing, Garrett sat up, a few of the maps falling to the floor. He knew trying to sleep now was hopeless. The water bottle from his nightstand seemed too light and he groaned when he realized it was empty. Dragging himself out of bed, Garrett walked over to the sink and turned on the water.

“I’m listening.” He called back to Kennedy, as he surveyed his bare chest in the mirror. It was dotted with dark purple bruises littered around the yellowing old ones. He turned to each side, cracking his back before clasping his hands above his head and stretching. His entire body hurt more than he’d expected. It meant Melanie was stronger than even he had first thought. With a fond smile towards the bruises on his abdomen, Garrett grabbed his now full water bottle and headed back in Kennedy’s direction.

“Okay, so this is what we know. Emily was helping me go over it last night.” Kennedy stretched out a map of the United States, grabbing the permanent marker from his pocket and uncapping it, holding the lid in between his lips.

A quick glance around the barracks told Garrett it was late morning: the other beds were empty and the sun pierced through the hastily strung curtains. He took a long drink of water, trying to focus on the things Kennedy was pointing out.

“Any large city is out. We know that. San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles—places like that. The virus would have spread their first. Lots of contact, lots of people. We know that from experience. The last thing we want is another Phoenix.”

Garrett just nodded grimly. Flashes of the city blinked through his mind and he was quick to shut them down before he thought of Pat and the mess they’d left back home.

“And from what we’ve seen, they can’t really deal with the cold very well. The New York outbreak toned down in the winter, with all that snow and stuff. They got trapped or whatever. It was a big deal.” Kennedy muttered, leaning over the map.

It had been a short reprieve for the world, the intake of breath as the attacks were muted for a month or two. They thought they’d gotten through the worst of it, but then the ice began to melt and the zombies were in full force, stronger than ever. Scientists and theorists had spun stories about why they’d survived so long underneath the ice, but the only thing Garrett had held onto was that they were safer where it was cold.

“So we head north. We saw Phoenix and most of the South when we left. North Carolina, Alabama and the South are out, and I don’t even want to think about Florida.” They’d heard stories of the students at Florida State University turning on each other, almost overnight. It sickened Garrett to think of the bloodshed, students being infected. And FSU wasn’t even the worst of it.

Kennedy nodded, turning his pen to the northern regions of the map and out to the Midwest.

“We need someplace cold and preferably unpopulated. Less people mean fewer zombies, right?”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both of them studying the map. Garrett jumped when a voice called out from the doorway.

“What about the state parks?”

Melanie stood in front of them, walking over smoothly and placing her fingers on the map, taking the marker from Kennedy’s hands. She circled large parts of the northeast, her fingers contemplating before standing back so they could see what she’d done.

“It makes sense. We need somewhere cold and uninhabited. Places like the Adirondack or Yellowstone. It’d all be animals. The zombies wouldn’t have headed there because there just aren’t enough people, right? They would have died out.”

Kennedy looked like he could have kissed her. “That’s brilliant.”

Garrett just nodded in approval. “I’m not sure about the Adirondack though. I heard it was overrun, just like the rest of New York. No…we need somewhere less crowded.”

He watched as Melanie’s hand worried over her hair, tucking it back up into a ponytail before sitting down on the end of his bed, next to Kennedy. She felt him looking and glanced up, and then it was his turn to blush as she looked at him critically, taking in every bruise and gash.

For a moment he wondered whether she was going to say anything, but she merely pursed her lips tightly together. “Why don’t we just head to Yellowstone and figure things out from there? I mean, it’s in what, Montana?”

Kennedy responded, his voice muffled as he leaned over the map. “Wyoming mostly, but yeah.”

Garrett looked at them both. He’d been to Yellowstone Park only once, when they’d played a show in Idaho. It was one of the trips where Pat had gotten really excited, buying three too many maps and dragging them across the park, documenting every second of it. He’d eventually gotten Garrett to admit he thought it was pretty cool, although he fought it the entire way. He couldn’t imagine going back now, after so many years and after so much had happened.

“We’re really doing this then, huh?” Garrett surprised himself, his voice sounding a bit strangled. They’d been planning and training, but until then it still hadn’t sunk in that they were leaving again. It had been a while since Kennedy had dragged Garrett into camp, desperate for any kind of shelter and now they were voluntarily walking away. It was almost as if they were turning their backs on family, but what did family mean now anyway? Sure, Kennedy had Emily but who did Garrett have? Lucy and Michael were friends that he knew he wouldn’t forget anytime soon, but what would it take for them to eventually turn on him to save their own skins? It was time to leave and they all knew it.

“Yellowstone.” Kennedy muttered, “Been a while, eh?” he said to Garrett with a weak smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Yellowstone.” Melanie repeated slowly, the words turning over on her tongue.

The second time Garrett opened his eyes that day, he found that the sun had started going down. He vaguely remembered them talking for a few more minutes before kicking them out, shouting something about how sleep was taking over his body and if he didn’t comply, it’d surely mean his death.

He got up slowly, rubbing his temples. Ever since they decided they were leaving, he couldn’t seem to get the fear he carried around out of his head. Garrett pulled on a sweatshirt, pushing open the barracks door. His feet found him in front of the dining hall and he didn’t think twice before going inside, the wooden and wire door flapping shut behind him.

He knew where he’d find Emily: in the back room, doing inventory or helping make food. From what he guessed, it was way past dinner time so there was no harm in him poking around. Whenever he randomly showed up during the rush hour, the other women working there would push him out with threats of poking him with their frying forks. But it was quiet as he crept back into the rooms behind the dining hall. He could hear Emily’s off-key humming as she worked, and he walked in and hopped up on the counter.

“So.”

A pile of spoons clattered to the floor as Emily jumped, whirling around and automatically relaxing as she saw Garrett.

“I hate you.” But he just laughed. He knew she couldn’t hate him for too long, no matter how much she grumbled about it. She’d always had a soft spot for him, despite his teasing.

“If you did, then what exactly are you doing?”

She looked around guiltily as she reached over to pick up the fallen spoons before putting them neatly into the box at her feet. “No one was here and I knew you guys were going to need some stuff, so I might’ve just been taking a few things. No one is even going to notice. I’m normally the only one back here. They won’t be missed.”

Garrett just smiled, grabbing a bagel off of the counter next to him and sinking his teeth into it. He mumbled incoherently, his words muffled by the bagel.

Emily straightened out, raising an eyebrow at him. “What was that? I’m sorry, I don’t speak boy.”

Swallowing, Garrett repeated himself, “I said, what else is in the box?”

She shrugged, “Just a few things I thought you guys might need. Essentials. But it needs to be out of here by the time the breakfast shift rolls in. Do you think you could put it in your car for now? We can always move it later if we need. I just wanted to grab the stuff while I knew I had the chance.”

Picking the box off of the floor, he groaned. His entire back was sore and his arms were screaming. “Just essentials? Em, this thing must way a thousand tons.”

She just rolled her eyes at him, wiping her hands on the towel that hung over her shoulder. “Don’t be such a drama queen. You’ll thank me later.”

Garrett smiled. He knew it was true. A part of him worried about leaving her behind. He wasn’t sure how well Kennedy was going to take being away from her, especially after her latest news. She kept them both line and he knew it.

Reaching his car in the makeshift parking lot, Garrett rested the box on his back bumper, reaching around to pull his keys from his back pocket.

“Your car is kinda hard to miss.”

Garrett grumbled as he opened the trunk, dropping the box into it with a dull thud. “I don’t make fun of your food so don’t make fun of my car. I like it.”

Emily laughed, leaning up against the bright yellow car. “But you do make fun of my food, so your argument is invalid.”

“I like this car.”

It had taken him ages to save up for the beat up car, but it got him from place to place without fail. And the color wasn’t something off-putting to him. Yeah, it was bright, but something about that just made him happy, although he’d never admit it out loud.

“I know you do, but…” she trailed off, suddenly wary.

“But?” he prompted, making sure he’d put his keys back in his pocket before shutting the trunk. He’d been locked out a few times before and it wasn’t something he liked doing.

“But are you sure you want to take it? I mean, it’s kind of bright. Isn’t the point to blend in and not draw attention to yourselves?”

Garrett leaned against the car next to Emily, chewing on his lower lip. “I’d just assumed we’d take my car ‘cause I’m the only one who owns one. God, going back for it was so risky and we made that trip.”

It had taken him a solid week to convince Kennedy and a few of the other guys that he needed his car. Kennedy and him had only abandoned it a three-day walk from camp when it ran out of gas. They’d done the rest of the trip on foot. But in the end, his arguments had won out and it was several worrying hours until they got it back.

She sighed, “I know. That’s why I’m mentioning it now. It’s too bright, Gar. And you know that. But what are you going to do?”

He dropped his head into his hands. He had expected complications, but not this early. Garrett hated that Emily was right. They were going to have to leave his car here and find something else to take. He knew Michael owned a dark SUV but he could never ask for it. There were few others that actually owned cars, as there was no place to go.

“We’ll figure something out. I’m not sure how, but we will.”

She didn’t look convinced, but Emily let it slide. “Now, let me see those bruises. I saw you wince earlier.”

“They’re fine, Em. Really.” He pulled his arm out of Emily’s grip before she could get a good hold on him.

“I don’t believe you. If you can barely manage to stay out of trouble here, how the fuck are you supposed to survive out there?”

Garrett took a step back. He wasn’t used to this side of Emily. They’d always had a banter-hate relationship, but she was actually worried about him.

“You’re worrying about me.”

She hesitated before rolling her eyes at him. “I just want you to be careful.”

He nodded. “I will be.”

Emily squared her shoulders before standing up and straightening out her shirt. “Good. Now I’m gonna try to get into the Armory to try and pick up a few more things. Think about what I said about the car, okay? Just think about it.”

Garrett gave a last look towards his car. “Yeah, I will.”

She started walking back to the kitchens, stopping when Garrett called out her name. “What?”

“Thank you. I don’t think we could have done this without you.”

Emily just smiled, “Only for you, Gar. I wouldn’t risk my job here for anyone else. You’re lucky Kennedy loves you so much.”

He laughed. “It’s true. Night, Emily.” The barracks were across the campsite, and Garrett heard every step he took in the quiet night. It was peaceful, the few hours when no one stirred. The night guards were already on duty and the sun wouldn’t be up for many more hours. It was almost as if for a little bit, Garrett owned the night.