The Walking Dead

April 9,2013

It was raining, a ridiculous downpour that soaked us all through to the skin. So seeing the practically abandoned mall was an incredible relief.
Ben pointed it out, of course. He was always the first to notice things. We parked our bikes outside the trashed Jamba Juice and broke into the entrance right next to it. And the entire mall was looted within an inch of its life. Clothes littered the floor, potted plants were tipped over, and storefronts were completely smashed. Now, this wasn’t anything new to us, but it was still a shock every time we saw it.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph…” Ben muttered as we carefully navigated the mess.
“Like they’ll answer?” Ricky responded sarcastically. He reloaded his gun for about the third time and glanced up and down the empty corridor. The entire place was lit with flickering light features, giving it a general creepy effect. “Sorry, didn’t need to say that.”
Ben just shrugged and glanced around. “There’s no bodies,” he said suddenly.
And he was right – it was unusually empty. Normally all the malls were filled with bodies of last-minute looters or people who had been trapped in there as a desperate resort by police or soldiers. But this one, except for the blood stains covering the walls and floor, looked clear.
Ricky started wandering towards the JC Penney, with his gun rotating back and forth like a third eye.
“Random?” I asked, following close behind.
He shrugged. “I have a bad feeling about the other way. Something... creepy, you know?”
The three of us soon came upon a hastily constructed barrier of potted plants and food court tables. The pattern of blood stains was heavier and you could see the tinge of greenish bile, meaning that someone had a standoff with a horde here and got rid of the bodies. Or perhaps they had lost and the zombies had only been injured. Point is, something had happened.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Ricky quoted absent-mindedly as he pulled a chair over and climbed over the barricade. Ben and I had exchanged nervous looks before following him, and slightly tightened our grips on our guns.
As we advanced, the blood stains became darker and appeared with increasing frequency.
“You think they survived?” I asked, before I mentally clamped a hand over my mouth. That had been one of the stupidest questions I had ever asked, and I was cursing myself for it when the voice appeared behind us.

“Drop the guns,” it ordered fiercely, and we all froze for a moment.
“I said drop them!” it ordered again, with a more intense tone while staying at the same volume. The three of us exchanged glances before we placed our guns on the ground.
“You been bit, scratched, anything?” it asked, and we all shook our heads simultaneously.
“Thank God,” it sighed in relief, and it finally dawned on me that the voice belonged to a girl. “We didn’t think there were people like us.”
She picked up the guns where we had placed them behind us, and seemed to inspect them for a moment before tucking each gun into its respective waistband. “You can look at me, you know. I didn’t say you had to face away.”
The three of us turned to face her, and I wanted to cry in relief when I saw her face; honestly, at that point, I had started giving up hope and believing that I was the only woman left.
“I’m Callie,” she smiled warmly, extending a hand for us to shake.
Callie had black wavy hair that went to her shoulders, but she always kept it in a ponytail and “out of the way,” except for a fringe of side bangs that always fell into her eyes. She had eyes that were an ordinary brown colour, round like a doll and surrounded by thick black lashes. Everything about her reminded me of a porcelain doll, actually, except her skin was a fading golden tan caused by staying indoors for too long. Her clothes were in a state of rags similar to mine, except for the brand new boots laced on her feet. The most unusual thing, however, were the bandages wrapped tightly from her wrists to her elbows on both arms, stained with dirt but otherwise clean of blood.
“I’m Ben, this is Ricky and-“
“Lucy,” I had cut in, giving my mother’s name instead of my own. “Nice to meet you.”
She smiled again and glanced around before turning and walking towards the department store. After a few steps, she glanced back at us. “You don’t just have to stand there. C’mon.”

Now, as I read over my writing, I consider that majority of the people who will read this have no clue what my friends and I look like. We all have (should I say had?) various shades of brown hair and brown eyes. Ben has dark brown hair, grown in a shaggy style because he refuses to let me go near him with scissors, and dark brown eyes with skin fading from a deep tan (due to our weeks on the road) to his previous light tone. Ricky has medium brown hair that’s grown out to halfway down his neck – the “modern hippie,” he likes to call it, and he’s worn it like that for a while now. Like his hair, his eyes are amber brown and his skin is pretty much the same as Ben. My hair is a dirty strawberry blonde – I used to have platinum blonde hair, but I dyed it red when I was in junior high and that pretty much stained my roots. I cut it short, to about shoulder length, with side bangs over my left eye. And my eyes are just run-of-the-mill brown.

As we approached the store, Callie glanced around one last time before slowly pushing open the cracked glass doors. The floor was littered with clothes, boxes, and overturned racks, all of this lit with the same flickering lights as the rest of the mall.
“Sorry,” she apologised as we navigated our way through the complicated mess. “Makeshift traps. They don’t really stop anything, but they have some pretty decent slowing power.” She gestured towards the lights. “The power’s been coming and going like this for the past couple days. I figure it’ll be completely gone by the end of the week.”
“How long have you been here?” Ricky asked in amazement as we approached the right-hand corner of the store, where the debris increased in density.
“About... a week and a half, I believe,” Callie responded. “I’m not sure. Time has started to blend at this point.” She shrugged and cleared a seemingly random stack of boxes in the middle of the aisle, revealing a narrow passageway of boxes that led into the house wares department. “You get creative,” she explained with a grin. “Hang on a sec.” She disappeared for a moment down the ‘hall’, and we heard the soft murmuring of voices before she returned. “Alright. C’mon.”
We followed her through the pathway of boxes, turning around sharp corners at least twice before opening up into a makeshift room. The walls were made of boxes stacked to the ceiling, their labels hidden by white sheets tucked into the crevices between boxes, and the rough carpet was covered in a similar fashion with dark green sheets. A pile of ammunition and first aid kits sat in the far right hand corner, along with a few guns, homemade pipe bombs, and a Molotov cocktail. A queen size inflatable mattress was pushed into the far left corner, covered with crumpled, expensive-looking sheets that looked recently slept in.
“Hi,” a man greeted us, his light blue eyes smiling along with his mouth. His dark brown hair was short and swept forward, like a skater. “I’m Alex.”
“I’m Ricky, and this is Ben and Lucy,” Ricky introduced smoothly.
“Okay, you said hi.” Callie lightly pushed Alex onto the bed. “You should be resting,” she said firmly.
“What’s wrong?” Ben asked, frowning.
“A bad flu and I got nicked on the shoulder by a stray bullet,” Alex explained and pulled down the left side of his collar, showing the bandages. “Not too awful though – it’s like a really really REALLY bad carpet burn. No big deal.”
“Yes it is,” Callie scoffed, handing him two pills.
He swallowed them dry with ease and turned his attention back to us. “So where’d you guys come from?”
“Los Angeles,” I said simply.
“Really?” Callie asked quickly, her eyes lighting up. “How are things there?”
“Overrun.” I flinched at Ben’s bluntness, but he continued. “I think they already emptied the evac centre once we got there. The military had just started bombing the city. That was about... four or five days ago?”
“Oh...” Callie and Alex responded quietly, glancing at each other before returning to the conversation with faked energy. “Did you hear anything about Vancouver?” Callie asked.
“No, why?” Ricky answered, oblivious to the emotional shift in the room.
“We’ve been listening to the broadcasts” Alex explaining, nodding towards the radio in the right-hand corner by the door. “Canada apparently unsealed the Washington part of the border, and they’re taking survivors at a centre near Vancouver. We might not be the only ones left in the U.S.”
“That’s reassuring...” I responded, glancing at Ben and Ricky. Suddenly, a blaring car alarm echoed from outdoors, and we all froze.
“I-It’s no big deal,” Callie stammered, before rushing out of the room. We heard the shuffling of rearranged boxes as Alex quickly dimmed the lanterns that sat around the room.
“That’s happened before,” he explained. “The car alarms, they attract the hordes like crazy. Sometimes a zombie will bump into one.”
“I looked outside really quick,” Callie whispered as she returned. “It’s the grey car again.”
“How long does that last?” Ben asked, with his voice tense.
“About a minute or two,” Callie estimated. “Last time they didn’t come in, so we should be fine.” She quickly glanced around. “Radio’s off, lights down...” she muttered before nodding. “Just stay quiet and they won’t come here.”
I felt as if a gust of cold air had hit me and I shivered, wrapping my black hoodie as tightly around my body as possible. Unsure of what to say, I turned to Callie and Alex again. “Have you seen the... mutated ones yet?”
Callie nodded. “I’ve actually seen the boomer, hunter, and spitter. Someone else described the charger, jockey, and smoker to me, and there’s still a witch over in Target.”
Alex looked hopelessly confused. “What?”
“About three days ago, a CDC worker passed through when you were passed out from the fever. He was heading down to L.A., stayed for a day to rest. There’s some nasty things out there – the virus is doing some creepy shit to the newly infected that makes them change shape.”
“I’m still lost.”
“Well, there’s the boomer,” Ben jumped in. “It’s this big fat one with these nasty blisters all over. Basically, its barf attracts the horde. It’ll get on you if it throws up on you, or if you shoot it when it’s too close.”
“Then the hunter is this blind one that screams and attacks you with these giant claws,” Ricky explained. “It jumps ridiculously high. I swear, it’s gotta go at least 30 feet up in the air. The spitter is a pregnant looking one that spits this huge acid patch at you, and it hurts.”
“And the rest?” Alex asked, his voice breaking slightly.
“A charger has one giant arm and it charges into you, obviously. I’ve seen it do nasty damage to a person,” I explained quietly. “The jockey jumps on your shoulders and will basically try to control where you go. And then the smoker has this long tongue that’s basically like a sniper, it drags you in or hangs you off a ledge or something like that.”
Alex exhaled heavily. “I’ve missed so much...”
“Not really,” Callie reassured, pushing a chunk of hair off his forehead. “You just have to be more careful now.”
“What’s a witch?” Ricky asked, confused, and Callie and Alex turned to look at us.
“You guys haven’t seen one?” Callie confirmed, and the three of us shook our heads.
Alex sighed in relief. “I’m hoping this means they aren’t as common as we thought...”
“A witch is this skinny crying girl-” Callie began to explain, but a loud crashing noise sounded from outside, and we froze. The five of us sat in frightened silence, waiting for the familiar scream of a horde, but we heard nothing. As we began to relax, we suddenly heard a soft moaning, along with a slow shuffling of feet.
“W-Witch,” Callie stammered in a whisper, her face turning pale. “A w-walking one... Do you think it’s the one from Target?”
Alex shook his head, wrapping his arms around her. “That one hasn’t moved ever since we got here. I think this is a new one.”
“I wanna see...” Ricky trailed off, his voice thick with curiosity.
Callie glanced nervously at him. “You sure?”
Ben and Ricky looked at each other, and nodded.
“I’ll go,” Alex offered, but Callie shook her head.
“No. You might cough and startle her.” She unwrapped herself from his arms and took a deep breath.

“Leave your guns here, you won’t need them. And stay silent.”