Nine Years Later

Zeppelin huffed as she shoved open the bar's creaky old front door, the smell of beer and salted peanuts wafting to her nostrils immediately. It was hardly a relief from the sweltering heat outside, the cheap circulated air barely puffed through the vents around the ancient pub.

  She nodded and smiled at a few of the regulars and murmured a hello to the other bartender as she tossed her leather bag under the counter and tied her hair up in a tight ponytail.

  Z had been working here since the first week she and Benji arrived to Atlanta. The bus dropped them in downtown center, and after letting her brother run around the shops and tourist sites for a full day, she checked him into a hotel and set off for the darker parts of the city.

  Not too dangerous, but not swanky enough that she wouldn't be able to afford the rent either. Once she stopped seeing a Starbucks on every corner and the Whole Foods markets turned into dollar stores, she figured it was a safe place to start.

  The For Rent sign hanging on the outside staircase leading above the bar caught her eye first. The street was well lit, though she still wouldn't trust walking down it without her pocket knife and container of pepper spray. There were no other doors to the section upstairs, so it was presumably a two bedroom based on the amount of windows she could count.

  So, she went in to the bar and asked to speak to someone who would know about a job and the place upstairs. The bartender, a young and pretty woman with shiny auburn hair, eyed her with a glare, hazel eyes shooting daggers up and down Z's body.

  Wordlessly, she turned and shouted down the hall to the kitchen, "Tony! Tell Debbie there's a girl here for a job."

  "And the apartment," Z added, plastering on a fake grin as sweet as sugar.

  The bartender rolled her eyes before shouting, "and the apartment!"

  Z waited a while, filling the time by people watching around the bar. It was relatively quiet, and the crowd was mostly middle aged. Debbie finally made her appearance, a short, bumbling woman with kind eyes and a bright smile. They sat in a booth in the corner and chatted for close to an hour, and Z found herself itching to get back to Benji.

  "How old are you again?" Debbie eyed the girl across from her.

  "Twenty," Z lied instantly.

  If there's one thing she knew about lying, it's to make sure you're confident when you do it.

  Debbie didn't look fully convinced, but enough to agree to let her wait tables and help clean up until she was old enough to train behind the bar.

  "Now, about the apartment upstairs," Z started, suddenly feeling a weight of anxiety pressing down on her shoulders.

  "Two bedrooms, but you can turn one into a workout space or-"

  "No," Z interrupted. "I'll have my younger brother with me so two bedrooms is perfect. How much?"

  Debbie paused, her gaze glinting with something different now. "Younger, huh? How young?"

  Z could feel beads of sweat forming on her hairline, trickling towards her temples. "Um.. he's twelve. Thirteen in a month," she added, as if that made much of a difference.

  The older woman made a small hmm of contemplation, fiddling with the ring on her left hand. "Tell ya what, girl. You work for me, in the bar and whatever odds and ends myself or my husband might need, and I'll rent the space to you for four hundred bucks a month. We got a deal?"

  Nine years later, they'd never left.

  She attempted to put Benji into public school which started okay, for one semester. Then he turned thirteen and something in him changed. He was angrier, moody and snappy more often than not. She told herself it was just teenage hormones, and hell, she was worse at that age.

  But then he'd started getting into fights with the other kids, and winning. Winning too well.

  One parent threatened to sue him for attempted murder after he smashed their kid's face into a cement pillar in the hallway. Three times. They only let up after Z made up some bullshit story about how their parents died, a lie, and she'd been taking care of him since she was kid, the truth, and she'd send him off to military school right now, another lie. 

  Instead, she pulled him out and started homeschooling him, and he ended up graduating two semesters early. Some kids are just different, she reasoned with herself.

  He'd found random jobs to fill his time, trying to have some sense of normalcy by working at movie theaters or smoothie shops, somewhere with kids his age that might have the same interest. By the time he was twenty, he'd come wash dishes at the bar just as she had back home.

  It brought a weird sense of pride to her chest.

  Then one night, after a long shift, Z sent her bar back home and closed up by herself, needing that extra relief of quiet so she could focus on counting down the drawers and cleaning up.

  A loud knock on the front door didn't scare her too much, people came by late all the time wondering if they were still open.

  "We're closed!" She shouted out without turning from her task of plugging the beer taps.

  The second knock, louder and faster, sent her heart racing. The door creaked open, and she finally whipped her head around.

  "Hey, asshole! I said we're closed."

  The man was familiar to her, at least what she could see underneath the black hoodie pulled over his face. He'd been drinking himself silly at her bar rail all night long. He tucked a piece of metal into his pocket, presumably what he used to jimmy the locked front door open, and a wicked grin spread across his face.

"I w-was watching you all n-night," the man slurred, taking one stumbling step forward.

Z snapped her jaw shut tight, narrowing her eyes into slits. "Don't embarrass yourself, man. Don't make me call the cops or beat your ass, and I might let you come back to my bar someday."

She'd never had a problem telling the men around the bar where they could stick it if they got too friendly, but she was generous and didn't hold it against them when it came to drinking on her shift. It was money going in her pocket, after all.

Her new friend didn't respond with words, only another grin. His hand lingered in the pocket he stuck the metal in, long enough to make her gaze drag back down to his concealed hand.

In an instant, he was pulling out a gun.

Before she could scream, a loud crash through the front door had both of them whirling to face the sound. Benji threw himself at the stranger, tackling him to the ground. The gun flew out of his hands and skidded across the hardwood floor, underneath a booth where Z crawled in to get it. When she turned, the man's face was barely recognizable underneath the mass of blood and torn flesh.

Benji slammed his fists into his head over and over, one after the other. Blood flew off the man's face and sprayed Benji's chest and arms, but he ignored it. It wasn't until he heard Z screaming that he finally stopped hitting him.

He took a second to call Tyson, their bouncer on the weekends, and murmured a quick order for him to get here in ten before hanging up, shoving the phone back in his pocket. He spat at the unconscious man on the ground in disgust before stepping over him to reach his shaking sister.

"What did you do?" She managed to whisper, her wide eyes unable to meet his own.

"I'll take care of it," he avoided her question and wrapped her in his arms, squeezing tightly. He pulled back, gingerly taking the gun out of her still trembling hands.

"Go upstairs," he murmured. "Ty and I will clean up down here."

She couldn't answer, couldn't find the words even if she wanted to. She could only tread upstairs, curl up on the couch, and wait for her brother to return.

  It was almost dawn before she finally heard the front door open, the light from the street lamps illuminating his silhouette.

  "What did you do?" She repeated, her arms wrapped around her knees in a protective cocoon.

  He watched her for a minute, his face shadowed by the dark. "I took care of it," he repeated, shutting the door softly and stalking down the hall to his room.

  She didn't ask any more questions, and every night she spent at the bar after that, so did Benji.

  Now, the two of them practically ran the place while Debbie and her husband relaxed at their condo in Florida.

  She tapped her clock in code into the computer and went to work, pulling out her clipboard to count the liquor bottles while the sounds of chatter and some sports game blared in the background.

  Dave, one of her regulars, plopped into his usual spot at the rail and shot her a grin. "Z, my favorite bartender this side of the Chattahoochee River! How are we today?"

  She rolled her eyes, though she couldn't help the smile widening her cheeks. She set her clipboard down and got a glass out from the cooler before she poured him a beer, setting it down in front of him with a smirk.

  "That river line has never worked on me before, Dave and it's not going to now," she winked and went back to her task of counting.

  "One day, girl. You'll see the error of your ways and come to the light, alright?" He chuckled and took a sip of his beer, his eyes lingering on her ass when he thought she wasn't looking before they turned to the tv.

  She didn't mind when men looked at her, and she specifically wore these jeans because she knew it would be a busy night and they make her ass look great. Men would objectify her if she was wearing a fucking turtleneck, she might as well play into and make some money off it.

  Dave was relatively attractive, with a clean cut face, perfect smile, and broad shoulders. He graduated from Georgia State as part of the Alpha Phi fraternity and looked every bit the part of it.

  Not her type.

  An emergency alert blared across all the tvs, earning multiple groans from the men as their games were interrupted. Z crossed her arms and leaned against the counter, waiting to see the little message scroll on the bottom of the screens.

  A light, melodic, automated voice read out the message, and the chatter in the bar died to a hush.

  'This is the emergency alert system. Civil authorities in your area have reported numerous attacks on civilians. Information will be updated as it becomes available. This is the emergency alert system. Civil authorities in your area have reported numerous attacks on civilians. Civil authorities in your area have reported bodies rising from the dead and attacking civilians. Do not approach these individuals as they are considered highly dangerous and infective, their saliva is spreading a virus through groups of civilians. This is the emergency alert system. Civil authorities in your area have reported-'

  She couldn't listen anymore. Everything had faded to a buzz, a numbing static in her brain as she watched the messages repeat over and over. She was somewhat aware of the customers, some of them scrambling out of their chairs, some crying, some hopping over the bar rail to snatch the bottles she had just counted.

  She saw Dave, frantically pulling out his phone to call someone. "Baby? Did you see the messages? Oh god, I'll be home soon. Okay, I love you."

  A girlfriend. Nice.

  He took off, and she numbly watched him go. The morning bartender paced over, two shot glasses full to the brim with vodka in his hands.

  "What the fuck is going on," he cried, tears lining his eyes and smearing the liner there. He took one shot, passing the other to Z.

  She took it from him gratefully, tipping back the glass. She didn't even feel the burn of the vodka snaking down her throat. She felt nothing.

  Only a need to find Benji.

  As if her mind finally clicked into place, she pushed herself off the bar, wrapping Jay in a quick hug before she snatched her bag from under the counter and sprinted out the door.

  The streets were already shrouded in madness, cars left abandoned as they piled up in the packed spaces, everyone rushing to get out of the city at once.

  She took the stairs to their apartment two at a time, flinging open the door and nearly tripping over her brother.

  "Damn," he groaned, rubbing his leg where she kicked him.

  "What the hell are you doing on the floor?" She threw her hands out at her sides before she joined him, dumping the contents of her purse on the ground.

  "I dropped my cigarette under this stupid table. You see the alerts?" He reached under the table they kept by the front door for their mail and keys, pulling out the stick of tobacco and lighting it instantly.

  "Obviously," she snapped. "And you could at least open a window."

  "Jesus, sorry," he bit back, puffing on the cigarette and watching her grab the few important items she kept in her purse and tossing them into her go bag she always kept by the door. "You really worried about our place smelling like smoke at a time like this?"

  She bit her bottom lip and murmured a sorry, still focused on gathering anything she thought they'd need. She stood then, stalking to the kitchen to toss in a few granola bars, some crackers, and a jar of peanut butter. Four water bottles later and she felt ready enough to turn back to her brother, who was still plopped against the wall, his elbows resting on the black jeans covering his knees.

  "We've gotta get the fuck out of here," Z whispered, almost to herself.

  Benji cracked a smirk, rising casually and slinging his own go bag over his shoulder.

  "Feels like we've been here before, huh sis?"

☾

The forest was calm this morning. Even the birds only hummed softly. But something else hung in the air, something cold and heavy.

A couple of weeks had gone by since the day everything went to shit. The alerts had been right, the dead had risen and began attacking the living. Something she thought she'd only ever see in movies, and yet, here they were.

Z and Benji managed to stay hidden most of the time, finding shelter in abandoned cabins in the woods, or the backseat of car. They'd always move on in the morning, drifting from one place to the next. They both had adjusted to fighting off the biters, though the fact that Benji had not only adjusted quickly, but excelled at killing didn't sit right with her. It kept them both safe, and for that, she had to be grateful.

Today, their only goal was to find food. Z found that she excelled at hunting, and was able to sneak through the woods with a quiet patience that only some people could master. For that reason, she made Benji go off on his own she hunted, if only so that he wasn't blundering through the forest next to her and scaring off every trace of food.

After a mile or two, she finally understood why her skin was crawling today. She dropped to the ground, catching her breath in her throat as she spotted the arrow sticking out of a tree, the bright plastic fletching prominent against the muted greens and browns of the forest. The bolt pointed East, straight ahead of her. Whoever shot it must be close by.

Sliding on the mud under her, she slowly raised herself up, keeping her body bent at the knees to stay low below the overgrown brush. Seconds that felt like hours tick by, one after another, and she heard nothing in the forest. So finally she stood, concluding the coast was clear. For now.

Where the hell is Benji?

  She sprinted in the opposite direction the arrow came from, thankfully that would put her towards Benji, and she put as much distance between her and the arrow as she could before her body gave out, slumping against a large oak tree. She gulped the dewy air into her shrieking lungs and peered around the thick tree, only the woods surrounding her.

A hawk screeched above her, piercing through the thick silence. Desperate for water at this point, she forced herself to her feet and continued her journey.

  It only took a few minutes to get to the bend in the creek. Z sat on her knees in the bank and scooped her hands into the cool blue ripples, iridescent pearls dripping from her fingertips. She sipped on the pool she created with her hands before pouring some on her head and splashing her arms. The sticky Georgia air sizzled around her, the heat overwhelming even late into the evening.

  Snap.

  She leapt to her feet, her pistol eye to eye with a crossbow.

  The man froze, staring at her wordlessly with narrowed, piercing blue eyes, his bow pointed in between her green ones.

  "The hell are you?" He grunted, low and deep. His dirty, tanned skin and torn clothing told Z that he had been in this world for some time, that perhaps he had lived in this world even before the turn.

His dark brown hair was scraggly and short, dripping with sweat and clinging to his forehead.  He wasn't necessarily lean or thick, he was nothing but hard muscle and bone. She swallowed, considering her chances of running.

  With that crossbow gripped in his large hands, they were extremely slim.

God damn it Benji, now is one of those times where I'd love for you to just burst in and pummel this guy.

  "Veronica. You?"

Her chest felt as though it was smacked with a bag of bricks, her rib cage caving in on itself. She wasn't really sure why she refused to give him her real name but she knew she immediately regretted it. Something about him, maybe it was because he was the first human she's spoken to in months, her mouth moved before her brain could snag the words back inside her lips. Or maybe it was the way his gaze seared into her flesh that made her want to reveal herself to him.

She chose to believe the former.

  He lowered the bow, only slightly, and relaxed his stance. "Daryl."

  Z planted one foot firmly in the soft earth, the other ready to take flight if she had the smallest opportunity. Her boot slipped in the wet mud and she grimaced. "Well Daryl, I was just getting some water so I'll be moving along now." She stepped to the side and he raised the bow again, his biceps stretching taut and flexing with every move.

"You got a group?" He grunted.

She froze, wondering if she should reveal her brother. If something happened... a surprise guest might be her best shot of survival.

  "Nope, just me so if you don't mind, stop pointin' that damn thing at my face."

  "Nah, I mind."

  She felt her pulse quicken, sweat trailing into her collarbone. "You know, you're very good at keeping quiet. Normally I see people long before they see me." She spoke lightly, hoping a soft voice would come across as harmless, maybe even innocent.

A cat trapping a bird under it's paw.

Her fingers twitched towards the dagger at her thigh.

  He stared at her for a few more seconds, silently examining her face from across the water before lowering the bow once more. "Why you out here alone?"

  "Why are you?" She ignored the question and shot back.

  "Who said I was?"

  Her hands trembled slightly, barely dusting the tip of her dagger. She had gotten good at aiming it like a dart, but her instincts screamed he'd have a bolt in her just as quickly, and she really wasn't in the mood for dealing with a wound today.

   "Look, I'm not here for any trouble. Just traveling through."

  Daryl's mouth was a thin line as he slung his bow over his back. "Me too." He crouched down to the water and splashed his face, rubbing it through his scruffy brown hair and over his stubbled chin vigorously.

  She ran.

  She ran faster than she ever had before. Running away from home, evacuating Atlanta, racing her childhood best friend to the rope swing above the local lake.. None of those times compared to the speed she forced herself to use now. She darted through the whispering trees, tiny branches whipping across her face like razor blades.

  When she finally realized she couldn't hear anything over her crashing through the woods, she slowed, only slightly. The man seemed honorable, he let her go without a fight, but it wasn't worth the risk of staying in any radius of him or his camp.

She crossed the desolate highway stacked with cars and raced to the other side until the forest again engulfed her. She wouldn't stop running until her lungs were shrieking, begging for air.

Eventually, she skidded to a stop and hurled herself onto the ground in front of her. She laid like that for a while, on her back with her hands on her stomach, her breathing hard and fast.

  Benji should be anywhere in this radius, and was probably heading this way to find her too.

  Daryl. Seemed like a fitting name for the stranger. He seemed.. strong. Her cheeks flushed and she cursed herself. Imperceptible birds circled in the distant blue sky above her, searching for their dinner.

The thought of food sent a deep growl through her body and clutched her empty stomach, surveying the area. A squirrel scrambled up the tree next to her, so she went to work setting a trap before circling a small radius around her clearing to search for any edible plants.

  Another hour went by before she heard her trap latch, her dinner squealing, before quickly stabbing it through with that spear. Wanting to have it ready for the moment she found Benji, she efficiently went about gutting the catch, ignoring the way it made her throat fill with bile.

  Some things people just have to get used to in the new world.

  A ruffle in the brush behind her had her twisting her head, her gaze zeroing in on the flicker of shadows between the trees.

  Someone was watching her.

☾

  "Damn it, Z. Where the hell are you?" Ben snapped, grumbling to himself as he stalked through the forest. His older sister was defiant at her best, and outright destructive at her worst. She was supposed to stay within a two mile radius of the abandoned car they agreed upon, and of course, he'd been searching for an hour and found no trace of her.

  He could only assume something made her jumpy, and she crossed back over the highway to find him instead, even though that was not their 'in case of emergency' plan. She had a flare, but had previously refused to use it because she was waiting for the right time.

  Whatever.

  He sighed, running a hand through the jet black strands of hair hanging over his forehead before he set off to find her.

  A trail of smoke plumed in the distance, thin and light enough that he wouldn't have been able to see it if he was too far away. He weaved through the trees, zipping up his leather jacket as the sun began to settle into the horizon and the air dropped a few degrees cooler.

  The faint murmur of men's voices had him ducking behind a thick oak tree and yanking his jagged knife from its holster. Ben held it tight against his chest as he leaned around the tree, searching for the source of the voices.

A loud cackle from one had his gaze locking on the spot, and he silently crept through the trees towards it.

"You go first, it's only fair. I had the last girl," one of them chuckled.

Two sentences. That's all it took to send blood rushing to Ben's ears, crashing into an all consuming ringing in his brain. His vision blurred, red seeping into the edges as he quickly stepped into the clearing.

Two men held his sister to the ground where she struggled against their grasps. Their hands were everywhere on her. Her hair, her neck, her thighs, her arms. Anywhere they could hold her thrashing limbs as another man stood above her, slowly unbuckling his belt.

Ben flipped the knife in his hands a few times, holding the sharp end before he flicked his wrist, sending the point deep into the man's spine.

He cried out in agony, his legs giving out instantly under him as the knife severed his spinal cord. The other men looked up in shock, their expressions barely having time to form into anger before Z was flipping out of their hold. She sent her knee crashing into one of their noses, and he lurched back, covering his face with his hands.

She punched the other one in the groin, giving Ben enough time to slide his knife out of the spine of the first dead fucker and shove it through the second one's throat.

He turned to watch as Z shakily rose to her feet, kicking the man with the broken nose in his rib cage as hard as she could manage. She took her own knife out of the holster on her thigh and straddled the attacker, knocking his hands out of the way as he tried and failed to push her off of him.

She plunged her knife into his chest, again and again, letting out a raged growl with every slice of flesh. It wasn't until Ben's hand gripped her shoulder when she finally slowed, then stopped altogether.

She pushed herself off the dead stranger in disgust, wiping the blood off her cheek as she sniffed and turned to face her brother.

"Did they hurt you?" He snarled, barely able to contain his rage. He wished they'd come back to life just so he could slaughter them all over again. And do it slower this time.

She shook her head, though her eyes dully glazed over as she picked her catch up off the ground.

"Let's go," she murmured.

A few hours later, when the sun was fully settled and only their small fire illuminated the park around them, Ben cleared his throat.

"We should go east," he sighed, tossing a pebble into the crackling flames. "Go to the water, or hide out in the Appalachian mountains somewhere. Just... just east."

"Why east?" Zeppelin mumbled, flipping her knife between her hands back and forth, over and over.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Less populated, less god damn southern heat. Just a thought. Maybe Washington has something figured out, you know?"

"What, you think the government has a cure or something?" Z scoffed, shaking her head. "If they did, something would have happened by now. Nothing is going to get fixed. No one is coming to save us."

Ben watched her for a moment, his older sister who had always taken his life into her own hands. Who'd smiled in the face of death for him more times than he could count. What happened with those men today had shaken her, more than he'd ever seen before.

"I know," he whispered. "Which is why we have to save ourselves."

Z didn't say anything for a while, just stared into the fire. Finally, he could see the moment she made a decision, the slight tic in her jaw as her gaze met his.

"Okay. So let's go to Washington."