Clumps

  of my brunette hair fell into the sink, mixing with the tears that

  had already fallen as I had accepted that shaving my head was a

  necessary step in my survival. Not only would a buzz cut prevent a

  zombie from grabbing me by the hair, but I needed to remove all

  unnecessary wastes of energy I could think of. Gloria had been

  helping me with washing and drying my hair, braiding it for me after

  it was done to keep it tangle free and without assistance my long

  hair would quickly become filthy and matted. Even if I tried to keep

  it and kept it tucked tightly under a hat, the dirty, greasy feeling

  would wear on my mind and it would end up with me shaving it

  eventually anyway. I stared back into my own, tired and sunken hazel

  eyes as I put down the electric trimmer and tried to come to terms

  with my new appearance.

  The woman who looked back at me was not the person I pictured in

  my mind. I still thought of myself as the energetic twenty something

  that worked designing landscaping and spent her weekends wandering

  home improvement store and garden centres looking for new,

  interesting, or suffering plants to bring home and add to her

  collection. That girl had been twenty pounds lighter, clear skin, and

  not a wrinkle to be seen. I hadn’t even realized that sometime in

  the past few years wrinkles between my eyebrows had begun to appear

  where I furrowed them together through frequent pain. Also there had

  been a not insignificant amount of silver hairs I had just buzzed

  away. I swallowed hard as I finally looked away and began to clean

  the long hair from the sink. I didn’t have the time to dwell on it,

  but there was a pit in my stomach from how unfair it felt that so

  many precious years of my life had already been taken by being sick.

  Next on my list was to scour the bathtub to be as clean as

  possible, then fill it to the brim with water. There was always the

  possibility that water might stay on for a little while, but there

  would be no one monitoring it at the very least so after the next

  couple of days I would be unwilling to think of it as safe. Getting

  as much water stored as possible was priority number one until I

  could figure out an alternative way to get relatively safe drinking

  water.

  After becoming sick, my ability to care for all the plants I had

  evaporated and I had sold quite a few cuttings and whole plants to

  fund the time period between losing my job and finally winning my

  disability fight. It had been extremely demoralizing and painful to

  completely give up the hobby I loved, but in a way it was coming in

  handy now as I pulled the box full of my favorite propagation vases

  and flower pots from my tiny closet with shaking hands. The energy

  gel had worn off a little while ago, but I couldn’t slow down. My

  body was started to send out strong warnings like shaking muscles and

  twinges of pain in my swollen joints. I couldn’t listen just yet, I

  needed just a little more effort before I could rest. I set the box

  in front of my walker and gently pushed it to the bathroom.

  The dozen vases didn’t hold much, but something was better than

  nothing and I already planned to fill every single, bowl, mug, and

  pot in the kitchen so this was just a little extra insurance. The

  real prize was all the ceramic plant pots I couldn’t use to store

  water due to the drainage holes. The smallest one was destined to be

  shattered into shards and somehow manufactured into makeshift

  weapons. I hadn’t quite worked out yet exactly what I was planning

  or when I would need a weapon, but I would have to leave at some

  point and when I did I would need to be prepared for the worst. The

  others would sit and wait for the off chance I could find fruit and

  vegetable scraps. It was a long shot, but combined with the bag of

  potting soil still sitting in the closet I had a small chance to start a

  subsistence garden.

  I ditched the walker at the entrance to the kitchen and started pulling every single container I

  could find from the cupboards and filled them all at the sink. Then I scrubbed and plugged, then filled the sink with water as well. The bathroom tap would have to

  be the only running tap for washing for as long as it lasted. While

  the pots, pans, glasses, mugs and bowls had taken up every bit of

  counter space and then some also placed back in the cupboard and on

  the tiny dining table, I knew it would not end up lasting me for very

  long. However, water was checked off my list for now with a mental

  note to put it as priority for the next.

  Last thing I did before shuffling back to bed was to gather all my

  steak knives, a box cutter, roll of duct tape, a half a bottle of

  super glue, and any other zip tie or other fastener from the junk drawer I could

  think might come in handy. Carefully and slowly, I shuffled back to

  bed while trying to push from my mind the mental image of me tripping

  and stabbing myself on all the sharp objects in my arms. It would

  feel in theme with the path of my life to trip and bleed out to a

  random accident before any zombie could even find me.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Making it across the room unscathed, I plopped all the contents of

  my arms onto the bed where my feet would usually go and leaned

  forward on my trembling arms against the wall and took deep breaths.

  The muscles in my arms burned, my lower back was throbbing in time

  with my heartbeat, my vision was feeling cloudy, and my legs were

  getting almost too heavy to lift. Nothing I had done so far would

  have been physically taxing for a healthy person, but I was not

  healthy and even the simple moving of objects, bending over, and

  shuffling around my apartment was exhausting. I had spent a long time

  learning my body’s new limits and how to respect them and it was

  obvious that I was currently ignoring them and blowing right past

  them. The past taught me that I could continue ignoring them and

  pushing for a time, but the longer I pushed through, the harder the

  eventual crash was going to be. I knew I would have to be strategic

  and plan for the crashes, make sure that I had supplies and was safe

  while they happened, but they would be risky none the less. There

  would be no one to check on me and that fact scared me to the bone.

  Unwilling to dwell on the mounting dark worries and thoughts, I

  pushed back from the wall with a sharp inhale from the pain in my

  back and heavily thumped myself onto the other side of the bed. My

  heart skipped a beat as I heard a loud, bubbling gurgle come through

  the floor below me. I needed to learn to be much quieter and more

  careful. Obviously my building was already compromised and I needed

  to start learning how to be stealthy. I had yet to hear any commotion

  in my own hallway, but it felt like it would only be a matter of time

  before zombies wandered their way in from the city streets and

  aimlessly walked through buildings. I couldn’t predict exactly what

  would happen, but that felt likely given every fictional depiction of

  zombies I had ever seen. Of course that was with the assumption that the

  real zombies lost their sense of how to properly interact with the

  world and my blood ran cold at the idea that maybe they would retain

  their ability to open doors and windows.

  Careful to hold down the volume button as I pressed power on the

  remote, I switched on the TV. I always kept the sound low to

  accommodate my avoidance of overstimulation, but I didn’t want any additional

  constant hum that might attract unwanted attention. The scene

  immediately on the screen was of a darkening city street from a

  helicopter view, people running like flowing water away from

  snarling, gnashing zombies. Police and military barricades had been

  set up at the end of the city block and by the way it was fenced with

  razor wire I assumed it was a hastily thrown together safe area. The

  flash of fire from the end of guns increased in frequency as the

  horde grew closer on the civilians pushing desperately to get through

  the checkpoint until it was constant flashes. Eventually the line between the

  living and undead blurred until it was a sea of mass confusion,

  people being not only pulled down by zombies but trampled as people

  threw down others to attempt to save themselves.

  The safe area had quickly filled to capacity and the line of

  zombies was getting perilously close to the gate. Military and police

  who had been along the side of the street before the gate pushed past

  the people clambering to get in and secured along the inside of the

  gate, the barrel of their guns poking through the chain link. There

  must have been an order given and the gates on the safe zone were

  pushed closed, giving no care to the people still desperately clawing

  their way in. The camera cut away to a camera drone that flew close

  to the closing gate, the screen was filled with screaming, terrified

  faces, many of them already bloodied and bruised. For a few tense

  moments the people against the now closed gate kept pushing, begging

  to be let in, but their requests were met with more gunfire and those

  that survived had no choice but to scatter, breaking windows and

  doors of the buildings nearby to find an escape point away from the

  encroaching zombie horde. The scene cut away to female newscaster

  whose professional bun hairstyle had begun to completely come apart,

  her eyes were sunken and hollow and off camera she had obviously been

  crying heavily.

  There were closed captions, but I was honestly too stunned to pay

  attention, my brain was trying to catch up with what I had just

  witnessed. I had been operating under the assumption that I needed to

  prepare for the worst case scenario, yet I had been holding out at

  least a little hope that I was just overreacting and that things

  would get brought under control. Those hopes had been completely

  destroyed and I had to face what I already didn’t want to accept.

  This was it, this was going to be the world now and I have to

  approach everything I do as it could be the last decision I make. The

  primal terror flowed through me, making my already shaky body quiver

  like I was naked in an ice storm and my stomach clenched and

  threatened to vomit. The faces of the people realizing they were

  locked out of the gate and left for certain death by gunfire or by

  being torn apart by zombies would haunt my dreams for the rest of my

  life. However long that would end up being.