The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

Shouts disturbed my post yesterday, coming from outside the motel.

Everyone was immediately on edge, grabbing weapons and peeking out from the edges of curtains. I joined them in time to see a group running ragged across the motel’s courtyard. I knew that look on their faces, hunted and shocked at the nature of what chased them. Dillon offered to go to the roof – he found a way up there a couple of days ago – and took off as soon as he had the nod.

The newcomers swept in and smashed against the doors. We had locked all the outer doors and they started up a frantic hammering, trying to bash their way in. They sounded like shamblers on speed. It was hard to know if they were running from the broken dead or the Pride, but I suspected the former.

Either way, it was dangerous to let them break in; we couldn’t lock a smashed door behind them. Thorpe rapped on the glass of a nearby window to get their attention and asked them what they wanted here. Of course, they immediately began all shouting at once, trying to batter their way in verbally instead of physically.

Shamblers, it came down to, though they used the z-word. There was something in the way they said it that knew how ridiculous it sounds. Dillon came sprinting down from the roof then to tell us that they were close, just outside the motel; this group had been followed right to us. And there were a lot of them – a whole bloody herd, the kid said.

We had a choice to make and no time to make it in. Do we let them in or leave them out there to face the shamblers alone? We don’t know these people. They might turn on us, or run off and leave us to face their pursuers alone. I knew what my heart wanted – the right thing, the benefit of the doubt – but it was too bruised to speak loudly.

Inside, we looked at each other with that grim knowing that we should take a chance on them. Dillon said my name, confused that there was even a choice to make. Outside, their begging continued into our silence, and then broke off abruptly. They were shouting then – no, no, don’t do it, stop!

Before we could see what was going on, a trash can shattered the window next to Thorpe. A body scrambled in after it, no doubt the can-chucker. The big fireman was so angry that he punched the interloper in the face, dropping him onto his butt on the shard-strewn floor.

“We can’t close a broken window, you fucking idiot,” was the sentiment of his abuse.

The sweaty weasel stared up at him, touching the blood streaming from his nose in shock. Everyone else was standing and staring, inside and out. I unlocked the door before anything else was irreparably torn open and the newcomers skittered inside. More than one of them was bleeding and I saw at least one fresh bite-mark.

Thorpe looked ready to whale on the stupid weasel some more, so I stepped in and said that we needed to barricade up the window, and right now. The herd of shamblers were just stumbling into sight and that was enough to close mouths and motivate feet into finding things to block up the portal. Mattresses braced with furniture that choked up the corridor soon solved the problem.

When it was done, we all stared at the oncoming horde. I wanted to go around and barricade every door and window, but there was no time. There were too many ways into this place for those inclined or uncaring enough to use brute force and persistence.

They were halfway into the courtyard when they stopped suddenly, their heads lifting as if they had heard something. Their coordinated shuffle broke into a hurried smatter of motion, if they can be said to hurry at all. They turned and swarmed across the road into closer buildings.

Some of them didn’t make it. The stragglers were caught by the rain when it came about half a minute after they smelt it.

It was one of the most horrific things I’ve seen. The sheet of gleaming green-grey came down and melted them, pallid skin to red to white bone in sodden streaks. They just kept going as if they couldn’t feel it, as if their eyes weren’t burst and their reaching hands weren’t shorn away and shortening with every second. They kept moving on eaten-away legs and crawled on stumps. They didn’t stop until their heads were gone, washed away.

I wasn’t the only one who felt like throwing up; I wish I’d thought to cover Dillon’s eyes, but it all happened so quickly.

After it was done and the rain was filling up the gap between us and the shamblers, attention turned to the newcomers that had led them to us. We couldn’t throw them out, so we told them to go to the other wing of the motel. We didn’t want them near us.

They grumbled and spat, but they went. I noticed that the weasel wasn’t with them; I don’t know where he slipped away to while we were watching the oncoming storm.

I had a sudden fearful thought that he had gone into one of the rooms when a door opened behind us. I turned around to see Ben standing in the doorway, looking at us in puzzlement. He hasn’t been able to stand on his own since he got sick, but there he was and I grinned with delight.

“What’s going on?” he asked, before I bounced over to hug the stuffing out of him.

We spent an awkward night, keeping an eye out for those shamblers in case they decided to come looking for us, or the other group. They never came and we all breathed a little easier by morning. We kept to ourselves today, in case the shamblers were still close, but we’ll be moving on tomorrow. Heading northwest towards Dad’s car yard.

Ben’s more like himself, brighter, moving around and talking. The relief bubbles up in my chest when I’m not paying attention and threatens to burble out in something incoherent. Tomorrow is looking better.

Last night, Ben drew me aside to quietly hand me a bombshell. I didn’t know what to do with it, of course; I still don’t.

He’s been quiet since he came out of his room, withdrawn like he’s been ever since he got sick. I thought it was just because he was ill, but now I’m not so sure.

He had to leave, he said. He had to go find Hugh – his sister’s husband, the one that left her and never came back. He had to find out what happened to him; he had to know why his sister was left alone to despair and die, with his beautiful little nephew. He needed to find some answers.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All this time, all this fighting to stay alive and for him to stay with us, and now that he’s getting better, he wants to leave. I understood his reasons, I could comprehend them, but they sounded false to my ears. My brain was too busy filling up his words with other meanings.

Was it me? Did I do something wrong? (I’d try to make it up to him, whatever it was.) Was he afraid of making us sick? (Because it was way too late by now, if that was likely.) Was he better at all, if he thought that going on his own was safe? (Maybe he better lie down again.) Did he really think that we wouldn’t go with him, if he needed to do this?

No, he said. He couldn’t ask us to come, and it would be safer if he went alone. He’d be able to move faster on his own. Without us.

“I’ll come back, Faith,” he said, putting a chilled hand to my cheek. The gesture grabbed me by the heart and I swallowed painfully, feeling cracks forming. “I know where you’re headed. Once I have this figured out, I’ll catch up.”

Don’t go. I begged him, but he was stone. We need you, we all need you. I need you. Don’t leave me.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ben change his mind about something once it’s made up. The thing is, he always agreed with me before.

I started to cry and he hugged me awkwardly, kissed me on the cheek. I tried for more, in case that might make him stay, but he pulled away and picked up his pack. The crack in my heart widened a little bit further.

“Now?” I asked him. “You’re leaving now?”

“Yes. I’ll be back, Faith.” He made me promises I couldn’t absorb while I was wondering how I was ever going to tell the others.

I begged him not to go, pride all shrivelled and forgotten. He looked at me with regret and then left by a back door. The rain had stopped and it was thick darkness outside. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run after him and drag him back physically; I wanted to scream at him for doing this. It hurt so much I didn’t know how to breathe any more, and the air outside swallowed him, leaving me staring at the black hole of the doorway.

Thorpe found me like that, tears streaming down my cheeks. I don’t know how many times he asked me what was wrong, what had happened, before I heard him. I tried to tell him, I tried to explain, but it all curdled in my throat until all I could throw up were broken phrases and choking sobs. He asked me if Ben was dead, shook me until more words tumbled out. I think he got enough to understand, because he stopped asking.

He was the closest chest, so I buried myself in it. He was awkward about it, but I couldn’t care about that just then. I was useless for anything except seeking comfort, even when the others started trickling in, wondering what was going on. I couldn’t hear what he told them; it was all a blur, swirling around my swell of pain.

Someone touched my hair – I think that was Matt, the gesture felt familiar – and Thorpe handed me off to Sally. She sat with me and held me while I cried myself out, until my eyes were hot and my head felt three sizes too big.

Someone else closed and locked the door behind Ben.

We were supposed to get moving today, but it didn’t happen. Dillon spied the shamblers still in the area from his rooftop vantage point, barely a block away, and we didn’t want to chance a meeting with them. I wish we had been able to go; I wish I had anything to do except sit here and think about this.

I miss him. I don’t understand why he had to go alone.

There’s an ache where he used to be.

The group that had led the shamblers to us slipped away sometime over the past couple of days. We didn’t care; if anything, their absence was welcome, because we didn’t have to worry about what they’re up to and if anyone was breaking more windows.

This morning, the herd of shamblers they brought to us finally stumbled on the motel. Dillon had been sent to the roof to check on the best route out of here before we left; he was only gone a couple of minutes before Masterson called us over to the window. There were bodies scattered all over the courtyard, upright and stumbling, heads lifted like blind dogs. A heartbeat later, the first thump came from down the corridor as they found the wall and started to try to get in.

Things were frantic then. Our assembled packs were shoved somewhere out of the way and we all grabbed weapons. I asked what we knew about them, how we could fight them, and everyone came back with the same answer: the head. The only time we’ve seen them stop is when their heads have been mangled. Luckily, there wasn’t time to think about that too deeply.

It’s getting harder and harder not to use the z-word. It’s like they want it.

Thump, thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump. More of them were joining in, and we all knew that the combined pressure of their persistence would break a way in eventually. I wanted it to be sooner rather than later, because the waiting was shredding our nerves, one heedless thud at a time.

And there was something curled up in my chest that wanted the chance to have a go at these things, these monsters that have dogged our steps and haunted the dark hours. They stole our friend and keep trying to devour us. I wanted to hit them and to keep hitting until they stopped coming. A part of me knows that it wasn’t all to do with them, that they were convenient, but I didn’t care at that moment.

I needed to stand and fight. I wanted to tell the world that I had a right to live, no matter what it threw at us.

I was angry for a lot of reasons, some of them far from righteous.

Dillon came slip-sprinting back from the roof, breathless as he gave his news. There were more coming from the back of the motel – there was no way to escape that way. My stomach lurched, partly in horror because I hadn’t even considered it. Running should have been my first option, but I hadn’t even thought about it. I closed my eyes, disappointed with myself.

A door creaked down the hall and metal pinged in protest. They were almost inside. I told Dillon to get back up onto the roof and to take Nugget with him. I don’t know where the damn cat was, but he could look after himself. He always seemed to find us after the bad stuff was over.

Masterson snagged the boy by the arm before he could slip away again. “You could always make yourself useful and throw stuff at them, y’know,” the doctor said.

He was right. I wondered then if the roof wouldn’t be the best place for all of us, until I remembered about the rain. We’d go up there only to have to come down into a shambler-infested motel or be melted by the rain.

Then a window broke and there was no time for such considerations. Just calling to each other and trying to fend off the mindless hunger of yellow-toothed mouths.

It’s harder to break someone’s skull than you’d think. The movies always made it look so easy – one quick whap and down they go. It’s nothing like that. For starters, it’s not easy to hit someone in the head when their arms are outstretched towards you. Then it’s hit and hit and then hit again, until that fear starts to climb up into your throat, wondering if their skull will ever give way. It’s a sickening crunch of bone and the squish of something softer. Then they judder and crumple, their strings snapping.

We almost cheered when the first one went down, but three more had clambered inside in the time it took us to deal with that one. The narrow corridor made it difficult for all of us, but we all pressed on.

I’ve never been good at fighting. Until the bomb went off, I’d never had to before. I’m better with words when it comes to this kind of thing; in combat, I have a tendency to flail. Who knew that baseball would ever come in useful for something like this? But I had never been that good at sports.

One thing no-one ever tells you about fighting is how tiring it is. By the time the second one went down, my arms felt like lead. I kept going because I didn’t have any choice, and my world narrowed to gasps chilling my teeth, the coppery taste of blood, fending off hands and trying to get the bastards to stop the only way I knew how.

At one point, I heard Sally scream. I looked over to see Masterson with a frighteningly furious expression, whipping his metal pipe at the head latched onto her arm. It let go and crumpled. Motivation was a telling factor.

I thought about Sax, corrupted and broken. I thought about Ben, how he had almost joined these things, and how he left anyway. I thought about the others we’d lost, and the sleep that fear had stolen from us. I thought about the compromises we had to make to survive. It helped. It kept me swinging.

There were so many of them, and there were only five of us left. Even with Dillon and Nugget raining pieces of the roof down on them outside, they kept coming. It wasn’t until the other group returned that we managed to really put a dent in their onslaught. I’m not sure where they came from – flushed out of another building and driven back this way, I think – but they didn’t hesitate to join the battle when they reached us. I think they knew there wasn’t anywhere else to go.

Two groups together managed to make headway against the shamblers. There were too many of us for the corridor and so many of them clambering inside from different points that we took the fight outside. Space was our friend: we were able to get around behind them and avoid their reaching arms completely.

Finally, I couldn’t lift my bat any more. It was sticky and matted – which I didn’t want to think about – and felt like someone had filled it with molten metal while I wasn’t looking. We all looked the same: stoop-shouldered and panting. There was a hole in the onslaught and more bodies lying around us than I cared to count. It looked like a twisted version of a warfield.

“We need to go,” I said. There were more coming, moving up the street and lurching in our direction. They were a pressure on our senses, though they moved too slow to be a danger to us once we were in motion.

We dug our packs out from under the bodies and called the kids down from the roof. There was a bounce in Dillon’s step that ebbed away when he got a close-up look at the corpses lying around. The other group looked at us and we looked back, and we moved off in a single clump by mutual consent. We were safer together.

None of us were sorry to leave the motel behind.

The group travelling with us call themselves the Wolverines.

“Aren’t they little ratlike things?” Masterson asked them. “Vermin, right?”

“No, dude, like the comic character. Wolverine.”

“Oh, right.”

We’ve agreed to stay together for the time being, for the safety of numbers. There’s no real trust between the groups yet; that’ll take time and I don’t like how some of them look at us.

There’s six of them, all men: Rico, Conroy (the comic fan), Jersey, Kirk, Sean, and Dale. They asked us where their friend Dennis – the weasel who broke the window – had gone, but none of us have seen him since we blocked up the pane. Last seen running down towards our rooms, they said. He must have been caught by something hungry. They didn’t look particularly upset; apparently, smashing the window wasn’t his first stupid act, and he wasn’t missed.

I felt bad for him. To not even be missed by the group – I can’t imagine that. Masterson is a pain in the ass and not well-liked, but I think he’d be missed. Not just by Sally and not just because he’s a doctor – I think we’d grieve for him. I hate the idea anyone means so little that those who knew him can step on without a flinch.

I had to work hard not to think about Ben too much while they talked about the weasel being missing. I could feel the tide rising behind my eyes and closing my throat, and had to fight it back. I still look for him when we stop for a while. He is missed.

It’s one of the reasons I keep this journal: so that no-one is forgotten. Not even Dennis, the wild window-breaker, the weasel who ran off without his group and into something’s jaws. He bucked against them all the time, they said, always doing his own thing and causing trouble. No matter how many times they tried to teach him a lesson, he never got the message. Not quite there, they said, though I don’t believe that. He looked frightened and desperate for those few seconds I saw him – not crazy. He knew exactly what was going on.

There’s also the possibility that he was reacting to more than the shamblers chasing them. I really don’t like how some of the Wolverines look at us.

We pushed on today, after spending half an hour trying to explain our route to the Wolverines without telling them our actual plans. We aren’t moving quickly – Matt is still limping badly and leans on me or Thorpe sometimes, and the Wolverines have injuries too. We’ve patched them up as best we can, but I think a couple of them are sick.

Another clump of shamblers blocking up a street forced us to detour to avoid them; we gave them a wide berth in case they picked up our scent. They seemed intent on a single building, shuffling into a clot around it. I think another reason we went so wide around them was so that we couldn’t hear whoever they were focussed on. It’s easier to ignore screams and pleas you know are there if you can’t hear them.

We’re not far from the car yard now. I can’t think about that too much right now – we have to keep an eye on the Wolverines. They think they outnumber us because we have kids with us; I think they might try something. I had to hide in a little side room to get this post done, just in case. We’re far from trust now.

I’d better go check on the others.