Static Screams

I dreamed of fresh water, bright blue skies, and archery tournaments. The dreams felt so real that when I woke, I was confused for a few moments. After a moment I heard voices, and the reality of the world came back to me. Groaning, I threw the blanket over my face. As if in response, the door creaked.

“Hey sleepy head.” The door clicked as Logan shut it behind her before sitting on the bed beside me. I groaned again, wrapping the blanket around my face. Logan laughed, tugging at the covers. “You might want to get up for a bit, we have a visitor.”

I sat up quickly, too quickly, smacking my head against Logan’s. We both cried out, hands going straight to our foreheads. “Fuck. Sorry, sorry.” We both laughed for a moment. Her face made me involuntarily smile before remembering what she’d said. “Wait, a visitor?” I tossed the covers off of me, moving to get up.

“Woah, slow down, Scar.” She put a hand on my chest. “She’s chill, don’t freak out. You’re still healing.” I grumbled, but moved slower. “There we go. Okay, her name is Wren. She’s really nice. She was a researcher in a lab before the Z’s, and was just looking for help with the group of zomb’s that were chasing her.”

“Are we sure she’s not one of them?” I chewed my lip in worry as I climbed out of the bed.

Logan watched me warily. “She really seems completely different from them. She’s more put together, with her words and demeanor. I highly doubt she would be with them.”

I nodded, pulling on my shoes, bracing myself on her shoulder as I did. She grazed my arm with one hand gently, lovingly. Once my shoes were on, I leaned down and pressed my lips against her forehead. “Thank you.”

She turned her head to the side. “What for?” I simply smiled in return, and headed to meet our visitor.

I found her sitting on the porch, talking with some of the others. Sawyer sat in the only chair, with Natalie on the arm of it, his arm around her waist. Peter stood on the stairs, keeping an eye out for any other visitors. On the opposite side of the porch was the girl, Wren. Her hair was chopped unevenly at her chin and shoulders, and laid in knots and tangles around her head. She was shorter than any of us, and wore a dark hooded cloak over cargo pants and a plain green shirt. She gave me a small smile as a greeting.

“You must be Scarlett, I’m Wren.”

I nodded once. “Hey.” Turning to Natalie, I gave her a look I hoped she understood. One asking if she thought this girl was trustworthy. The smile and nod she gave back assured me things were okay. I glanced around the area, before leaning against the porch fence. “I hear you’re a scientist.”

Wren nodded and her tangles swung with her face. I badly wanted to brush out her hair, or at least offer her a brush. I guess she’d been unlucky thus far finding one. “Yeah, back in Oklahoma.”

“They were testing theories about zombies.” Peter told me, without turning away from the woods he was facing.

I looked back at Wren, eyebrow raised. “What sorts of theories?”

“Not a cure or anything like that. I don’t think there will ever be one.” She started pulling at a knot in her hair while she spoke, trying to untangle it. “More like weaknesses and such.”

“She thinks the cold affects their brains, makes them process things slower.” Natalie spoke up from next to me. “She said going north might be a good plan to get away from them.”

Wren nodded. “They reacted much slower in the cold tests. Or at least the rats did.”

“I’m sorry, did you say rats?” Peter turned around, the word rats seemed to have caught his attention. “As in, zombie rats?”

Wren dropped her hair and reached into the satchel at her side. She pulled out a notebook, turning pages quickly before holding it up. It was a page full of scribbled writing. She pointed at one of them. “In eighty-two percent of tests, the zombie rats reacted slower when tests were run in a colder environment, and the colder we made it, the higher the percentage grew. In the same manner, more neutral temperatures made them faster. It’s like either end of the spectrum affects their brains.” Her sentences were run-ons, and she spoke fairly quickly as she shared her findings.

Digging into her bag again, she held up a smaller notebook of graph paper, with what looked like temperatures and percentages graphed on a chart. She traced the lines with a finger as she spoke. “The higher the temperature, the more quickly decaying flesh decays, which correlates with the fact that their brains start to die quicker, meaning they die!” Somehow she had started speaking even quicker. “And the lower the temperature, the slower it decays, duh.” She tapped the page.

“But! When it’s below a certain temperature, their brains start to freeze up, because they don’t have blood pumping through them keeping their brains nice and warm like we do!” She finally took a breath. “So I think that going north as we get into the colder months would be a lot safer. Because staying in spots where the temperature won’t drop below a certain number, will mean more zombies moving around. If you go north though, they’ll be slower and easier to take out. Feasibly, moving depending on the time of year would make it easier to avoid them or kill them all.”

Wren inhaled deeply, smiling at me.

I blinked a few times. It felt like an hour had passed, but I knew it had probably only been two minutes. “So basically, go to cold places when it's colder months and hot places when it's warmer months?”

She nodded. “Precisely.”

“I mean, you did want to head to New York.” Natalie pointed out.

“You’re not wrong, and if Wren’s theories are right, it’d be safer to go now than to wait for it to warm up.”

“Oh! New York is a great idea!” Wren said excitedly.

I narrowed my eyes. “We’re going to see if my nephew is dead.” I stated matter-of-factly. Wren’s face fell and Natalie elbowed me in the gut. “Sorry, that was unnecessary.”

Wren gave me a small sad smile. “Sorry, I haven’t found other survivors in a very long time, and talking science isn’t exactly something I get to do anymore. So I got excited.”

“We’re all good.” I smiled at her, trying to comfort the sting of my pointed words. “I’m sure they told you we haven’t had much luck with survivors lately either. So my trust in people is a little down right now. Thank you for sharing your findings. They’re helpful.”

Wren’s face lit up a bit. She definitely hadn’t been around people in a while. “Would it be...never mind.” She smiled a small smile, thinking twice of what she was going to say.

Natalie elbowed me again. I rubbed my side, glaring at her. She looked at Wren pointedly. I sighed. “Wren, would you like to travel with us?”