If I Die Before I Wake Chapter 17
Chapter word count: 4,148
Total word count: 38,438
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Cleveland, OH. A house outside of the city.
The house was dark despite the slits of sunlight streaming through the slats of two by four and plywood that covered the windows, even though most of them were still fully intact. As Alex and I entered the house, the red head shut the door with a wary eye before swinging down a large block of wood to keep the door barricaded off. Instantly Alex flinched as if we were being trapped here, but she held up a hand before letting another arm of wood slam down into the lock that was to hold it in place.
“Makes it harder for them to get in… but easier for us to get out than nailing it all shut. You’re not a prisoner.” She reassured him before moving past both of us and into a back kitchen where Giselle and Miles already seemed to be making themselves comfortable around a sizeable kitchen table. Alex and I exchanged glances before passing a staircase that went up to a second floor and a shot hallway that led to what looked like an office before entering the back of the house.
It was a pretty sweet looking place… Although every window as boarded up at least a few times, leaving us generally in some sort of darkness. Enough to see but when the sun went down, how in the hell did she navigate this place? There were wires, cords and weapons scattered everywhere, even down in the sunken living room that housed a couple couches and a TV that probably didn’t work.
“I’ll get you a first aid kit.” The owner of the house told Miles, who was pretty comfy looking in a kitchen chair, his legs sprawled out in front of him and both his and Giselle’s belongings covering most of a pretty expensive looking kitchen table. He gave a nod and a sigh escaped him as Alex and I stood awkwardly in front of our friends. The red head was rummaging in a kitchen that was to our left, opening and shutting cabinet doors with the air of someone who wasn’t quite knowledgeable of the house but was getting the hang of it. “I know it’s around here somewhere…” Or maybe she was just one of those people that always lost things, even if those things were always in the same place every single time. Her hunting rifle was settled on the counter top next to the sink. Sure. Where I keep my hunting rifle too… if I had one or a house to put it in.
“So who are you?” Alex questioned, suspicion still over his face and I didn’t blame him, even as I began to meander towards the living room. We had to deal with looters, zombies, partying college kids, zombies… and everything else. Everyone was a danger, whether they were spitting bile or not. I heard the kitchen rummaging stop for a moment and she must have been looking at Alex, but I didn’t turn as I stepped down into the living room, eyes focused on the generator and laptop that were on a low coffee table.
“Sophie. Been here for… about a week and half. Maybe longer.” She explained before going back to going through the cabinets, her voice growing a bit distant but still supplying information that she probably assumed Alex was going to ask next. “I’ve been watching them… Hawks. Diggers. All of them. Writing it all down for other people.”
Ding, ding, ding.
Alarms went off in my head. Alright. Maybe not alarms, but definitely some sort of alert system as I spun on my heel, my bag swinging out and slamming into my back as I did so. Laptop. Information. “Where are you putting it?” I questioned, my eyes narrowing. We were in the land of Zombie_Killer289… but this couldn’t be him. Maybe his little sister or girlfriend or something. But he had always referred to himself as a guy.
At least I thought so.
“Internet.” She replied, finally finding the case that held basic medical supplies and tossing it to Miles, who caught it deftly and dropped it onto the table before nodding at Giselle to fix him up. I heard a sigh come from her as he gave a helpless shrug, but didn’t care about their bickering as I stared at Sophie as she leaned up against the counter behind her, arms crossed over her chest. I could feel Alex’s eyes on me, questioning my sudden interest in the conversation.
“How? There’s no wireless out here. I’ve tried.” My questioned may have been harsh, but I had to make sure as I jiggled my backpack up and down a little, showing the weight of a lap top and all the accessories that came with it to make it work. Sometimes. The idea that Sophie had managed to not only get on the internet, but constantly do so and post the information we were in need of… I felt torn about it.
Of course, there was a chance it wasn’t her that was doing it all. “Dial-up still works. Sometimes. I type up all my observations and post it all on this blog. Don’t care who reads it as long as it’s up, yanno?” She gave a small shrug, catching Alex’s glance before he looked at me with questions in his eyes. Did he think it was…
Had to be.
“Zombie_Killer289?” I questioned instantly, looking at the laptop and generator for one more moment before catching Sophie in the corner of my eye. She had frozen her reach for a box of cereal that was in a cabinet nearly too high for her to access. Her green eyes were stuck on her goal of food until they flicked to me over her pale arm. And I knew it had to be her… but I shook my head. “You can’t be… he’s a guy… says so and everything.” The volume had grown in my voice, enough to make Giselle stop bandaging Miles’s arm… and for Miles to stop complaining for a moment as they all stared at me and Sophie for a moment. At my words, she seemed to relax, however and a lazy smile found her lips as her arm dropped to her side and she gave a casual shrug.
“Who would believe a chick if they said they were surviving in a house in Ohio by themselves?” Miles gave a snort that seemed to make her assumption all the more concrete and it made her shrug once more, an amused smile on her face. “It was easier to get my observations heard if I pretended to be a guy… then no one would think I was some dumb ditz out in California attempting to give false information. I’m doing this to help people.” She insisted, her smile flickering slightly as her eyes slid to the enforced windows. It had to have been hard attempting to fortify a house like this alone, and instantly I felt bad about my words, but couldn’t bring myself to apologize since I really had done nothing wrong. So I gave a small nod, understanding before moving to drop onto the couch in front of the laptop.
“How’d you survive this long? They seem to be ignoring sunlight the more we move east.” Alex picked up the conversation, much to my relief, and took Sophie’s attention off of me for the moment and she gave another shrug, moving further into the eating area of her kitchen, next to Miles and Giselle who had gone back to work, seemingly ignoring this superwoman.
“Not hard when there’s only one of you and you make sure to keep quiet for the most part.” Sophie replied, moving a few things around on the table, her eyes dropping down to the surface as she collected a few bullets, surely for the hunting rifle she had used so eloquently earlier. “I obviously know how to shoot.” A hand was clapped down onto Miles’s good shoulder, but he only gave a gruff grumble in response as Giselle had to tear away at his sleeve to get to the scratch that lined his bicep. “Fortifying the house wasn’t a problem once I got the supplies. I camp out upstairs and watch them. Mainly at night and slept during the day. Luckily for you, my schedule changed as theirs did.” Her eyes had focused onto Alex once more as he gave a small nod, finally sinking into a kitchen chair next to Giselle.
“Maybe you should take lessons from this one on how to shoo-ow!” Miles cried in the middle of his chiding of Giselle. Surely harping on her and her bad aim. Which was probably a bad thing and she gave an apologetic shrug, now dabbing lightly at the cut on his arm with some gauze.
“Whoops. Fingernail slipped.” She apologized lightly and innocently, her blue eyes sparking with what was probably jealousy. I was going to stay out of that kitchen, not sure who was more dangerous at this point. Sophie, who could shoot a gun and face Zombies by herself…. Or Giselle who probably wouldn’t think twice about clawing your eyes out with her manicured fingernails.
Probably Giselle.
“So… what are you watching them for?” I questioned, hoping to get the subject off of Giselle and a possible cat fight, my eyes dropping down to the very basic looking lap top in front of me. PC and probably was a few years old, although able to support dial up and whatever else Sophie was running on this thing through the generator. Which answered how she saw in the dark if her electricity was out. But she probably only ran it for the internet in fear that the things outside would hear and know that someone was in here. It was true… much easier to protect one person and make sure it was quiet and flashlight free if you only had to be responsible for yourself.
But if the Zombies decided to forgo the old ways of hunting only the things that got their attention? Or what if their attention was much easier to acquire as they grew more and more evolved? What if you had to leave to get supplies? They were starting to get used to daylight, it seemed, and I hadn’t seen a car for her to drive to wherever the closest store was. What happened while you were shopping? Who watched your back?
You were screwed.
“Research… watch how they evolve… I’ve gotten pretty good at picking out which ones are going to turn into what. Although there are a few whose files are pretty slim on that computer.” Sophie nodded her head towards her laptop before rising from the kitchen table and sliding over to the couch, settling down next to me, a pale finger reaching out to boot up the system. I nodded slowly, watching as the OS opened and all that jazz and she typed in a few passwords, opening up files and a few pictures that made my blood run cold.
“Yo-you took that yourself?” I stuttered, pointing at a large picture of what was apparently a Hawk. It looked to be about the same size as the one that had picked up Miles, same weird genetic structure that gave it impromptu wings and whatever the fuck else had made it non-human. It was snarling at the camera and I could only image that she had either been really fucking close… but how close to avoid that thing from picking her up?
“Yeah… telephoto lens… had to hide for a bit after that one.” Sophie admitted with a slight flush of her pale skin, letting the pointer of the mouse bring up a few more images, some of them a bit blurrier than others.
“We ran into a digger out in Indiana… he was pretty big.” I wasn’t attempting to boast, but it got a chuckle out of Miles and that was probably what he assumed. The ass. Alex seemed to have found this a good time to catch a nap and his dark eyes were closed, his arms crossed over his chest. But I knew he probably wasn’t sleeping… but just letting our voices cover him for a bit, still listening but not needing to watch all our backs for once. “Your info helped a lot on it… what other ones are there?”
This made Sophie flush a bit more and shrugged, clicking open the image of the Digger that I had shown Alex back in Chicago. “A few others, but they haven’t shown up too much around here and I haven’t even put anything up on the site about them yet, their profiles are too small… Diggers and Hawks are the two that are pretty common, especially around here. Mockingbirds and maybe even Psychedelics if you go deeper into the city.” Mockingbirds and Psychedelics… I hadn’t read about those on her blog yet and opened my mouth to question when she cut me off. “So why are you guys headed towards Cleveland? Shouldn’t you be heading in the other direction?” Ah, the difficult question and I turned to glance at Miles, who seemed to be taking Alex’s route of a nap and Giselle who was busying herself with the first aid supplies.
“Well… um… there’s this thing…” I stuttered, not sure if Alex wanted her to know about our mission. He shifted slightly on his chair, but hadn’t moved or made a motion to seem like he was even paying attention, let alone not wanting Sophie to know about this thing. Obviously she couldn’t do much to stop us. She looked at me expectantly, turned away from her computer screen with one leg tucked underneath the other. I wasn’t surprised at how smart she was, nor that she could shoot a gun and survive by herself. And I was almost humbled at the idea that she was doing kind of the same thing we were. Attempting to help those that were trying to survive by sacrificing herself and her life to do something important, just like we were trying to do, if we didn’t die first of course. My fingers fidgeted with the straps of my backpack as my eyes dropped to my lap, not knowing really knowing too much about the trip except for Alex’s doctor friend and a promise of getting on a plane and out of the country. Or even just possibly doing some good for the world. We had assumed we were all immune to whatever was in the water that spread across the country, catching those that were closest to Ground Zero off guard but allowing those on the west coast to pick up bottles of water and water filters, stocking up for the apocalypse.
“She’d be a good addition… if she wants to go.” Alex’s voice made me jump and instantly I turned, surprised that his eyes were still closed and his mumble was nearly half asleep. But I knew he had been listening almost immediately as he gave a cat-like stretch and rose from the chair, meandering down to sit on the ground next to the coffee table, rescuing me from the spotlight our hostess had put on me. Sophie had a confused look on her face as she watched him move. Giselle had turned, but hadn’t joined us quite yet and I had a feeling that her thoughts of Sophie were not very polite.
“Go where?” Sophie questioned promptly, her attention now on our leader instead of me, which was a great relief. Maybe it was the attention of a pretty woman, or the responsibility of attempting to relay the information that we had found out and our plans that made me nervous. But Alex didn’t rush to fill her in quite yet as he shifted on the carpeted floor, leaning up against the coffee table, his dark eyes not on Sophie but her work that was out in front of us. I could see the window that held her files, and there were tons of them, if not tons of word documents holding valuable information. Alex was right, if she wanted to come with us, she would be a fantastic addition to our team. Someone who could tell us the signals for most of the evolved zombies and could identify them on the fly, not to mention quite possibly tell us how to kill them before we injured ourselves our made the situation worse. I could only be reminded of earlier with Miles and the Hawk, and how we probably would have ended up shooting him instead of the zombie that was holding him hostage. Would that happen again somewhere else if we weren’t careful and didn’t have information? I couldn’t get internet too much further, and if she didn’t come with, I could only grovel and ask to copy all of her information from her computer and put it onto mine. But what happened when the battery ran out, or if I couldn’t look up the facts fast enough for us to survive?
She was a walking encyclopedia on the subject, even if her seemingly humble nature stated that she didn’t know much more than me at this point. According to the files in her computer, she knew at least enough to get us further and probably through Ohio, hopefully Pennsylvania and then into New York. Or however we were going to get there. With Alex’s knowledge of how to get there, Miles’s ability to shoot just about anything blindly and me and Giselle just proving to be back up… Sophie would fit right in, it seemed.
“There’s this guy who might be able to make a vaccine.” Alex began, his back straight as he relayed the same story he had given us. My eyes didn’t leave Sophie’s face, however, not knowing if she would think we were absolutely suicidal or heroic. “The trick is… he’s in New York.” Alex didn’t wince or hesitate at this fact, at least not enough to make her think he was lying to her or anything like that. But silence followed his words as both he and I practically stared at Sophie as she worked through the information that was going on in her head. There was no immediately inclination that she instantly wanted to say no, nor was there any jumping immediately on the bandwagon with this stupid plan of ours.
I admit it. It was stupid. Completely and totally stupid, but we were already halfway there and there was no reason to turn back now. The only thing that could slow or stop us was a major injury, and even then we had been trucking along pretty well in the SUV through Indiana and most of Ohio. Unfortunately, we still needed to put a new tire on the truck.
“Either way… we need your help. Either come with us or we need to crash for the night.” Alex continued, filling Sophie’s silence with more words about our plan. I could see the cogs and wheels turning behind her green eyes, however. Night wasn’t going to last too long… but that Hawk had attacked in nearly full daylight. Were we going to be completely safe anymore? Maybe at noon when the sun was at its hottest and highest… but what happened in the morning and afternoon when it couldn’t stave off the zombies? Would it be better to be in a car? What happened once we hit the busier cities, especially once we arrived in New York and wouldn’t be able to even drive down the street? Getting another full night’s rest was probably our best bet.
“I… don’t know. People are relying on this information. You guys were.” She cut Alex off at his silent protest that her work was useless, but proving to us that it wasn’t. “I can’t just up and leave… I was planning on hitting the road before it got to be too hellish around here. These things are getting stronger by the day.” Sophie admitted with a small shrug, leaning back into the cushions of the couch as her eyes drifted to the pictures she had brought up on the computer screen earlier. Images of the killer zombies stared and silently snarled back at her, attempting to threaten her into some sort of submission. Telling her to run to safety before they and their more advanced brothers caught up with her.
“Sophie… you’d be a great help to us… and if you came with us and this vaccine worked… we’d be helping those people out west.” I piped up, my voice small and quiet compared to Alex. He was the speaker of the group, obviously persuasive enough to convince all of us to follow. But I had a feeling Sophie would need a bit more of a gentle push than the rest of us. She wanted to make a difference in the world, unlike Giselle who just wanted a ride out, Miles who just wanted to kill Zombies and Alex and I… honestly I had no idea why I was on this trip anymore. Especially since my original ticket was information about Zombies that had evolved. But my information bank had dried up and Sophie was the encyclopedia now. And as for Alex… honestly I couldn’t pinpoint his motivation for coming other than to help contribute in some way, shape or form for a vaccine that could help. Maybe even to help whoever of his family was out west… but for some reason I had a sinking feeling that he was alone, quite like I could possibly be.
“I… Let me just think about it. You all can stay the night. There are bedrooms upstairs.” Her hand drifted towards the stairs that we had passed, although another uneasy feeling grew in my stomach at the thought of sleeping in a separate room than any of my other friends. We hadn’t slept apart since… well since meeting and while it had only been a few days, the idea of being away from them, or even one of them that could protect me if something decided to climb in through the window or show up in a closet freaked me out. It was like I was five again and crying to my dad that there was a monster underneath the bed. He had always told me that there were no such things as monsters.
Guess who was wrong?
“Do you sleep upstairs?” Alex questioned, not quite moving the subject of conversation away from New York, but allowing her some distance from it. She shook her head, red locks bouncing on her shoulders as she pulled her knees to her chest.
“No. Basement is more secure. You guys are welcome to camp down there if you want… there are a few mattresses and stuff.” Our leader nodded and the knot in my stomach loosened slightly at the idea of sleeping down in the basement. While basements were creepy, at least we would have concrete walls and probably no windows to allow anything inside. It would be better if we were all together, just in case something figured to check this house. They were getting resilient and who was to guess whether or not they were going to start busting through houses as well?
No one was really that safe.
Alex rose from his seat on the floor and I could hear a few joints cracking as he leaned back, hands on the small of his back to crack a few more vertebrae and all that. He flashed a grin before meandering into the kitchen, probably to help himself to some food. My eyes went in the opposite direction and back to Sophie, who was chewing viciously on her bottom lip.
Stay or go.
It hadn’t been a question for me and I had even fought for my spot… she didn’t realize how valuable she was. “Listen… Sophie I…” But what I was going to tell her never came out as the sound of a few bodies hitting the front door and the now familiar groan of something not living permeated the walls of the house. All of us jumped, instantly alert with adrenaline as the sound of crashing glass echoed through the house.
“Shit!” Sophie cried, instantly leaping off of the couch to gather her lap top and other things. Her green eyes flashed to Alex, who had whirled around to watch the vibrating front door for a moment as Miles lurched to his feet and Giselle began to grab her belongings.
“Gotta make a decision, Sophie! Come with us and find better shelter… or fight these fuckers off until they over power you!” Alex roared, immediately grabbing our supplies as if getting ready for the battle of his lifetime.
Which it probably was.