Willow
Approaching a darkened doorway, loose floorboards creaked beneath my feet. At least a quarter of the entranceway was covered in thick spiderwebs, their eight-legged owner paying me little mind as I ducked beneath it, finding myself inside a master bedroom of what had once been a large and impressive home. It was still impressive—how else could you describe the sight of two worlds colliding?
The roof had caved in, causing considerable damage to the entire front of the house, this room especially. A nearby tree had grown in through a broken window, a branch as thick as a man jutting halfway across the room. The skeletal remains of two people lay tucked neatly into a four-poster bed, the large, ornate structure heavily covered in moss. Nature hadn’t just taken hold here, it had claimed this space as its own. It was a familiar sight these days—man struggling while the earth flourished.
Passing a partially open closet, I peered inside, finding a nest made up of sticks and bits of fabric, with at least fifteen baby opossums wriggling inside it. All fifteen were happily clinging to the back of their mother, oblivious to my presence. The mother, however, had begun hissing at the sight of me. The longer I stood there, the more aggressive she grew, until her hisses had become growls.
I could kill her quickly, using the trusty piece of pipe dangling from the heavy pack on my back. She’d be the first real meal we’d come across in months. It was only the beginning of summer, but it was gearing up to be the hottest to date—game was scarce, and everything edible was quickly withering and dying under the unrelenting sun. The earth didn’t seem to care that those of us still breathing had been existing in crisis mode for years now. She just kept on turning despite us…or maybe even to spite us.
Sighing, I backed away from the closet. “Don’t mind me,” I whispered to the still growling opossum.
Sure, I was hungry—starving actually—but I wasn’t knocking on death’s door… yet. I’d been managing my daily hunger pains with what roots and vegetation we’d been lucky enough to find. And I’d have to be quite literally dying before I’d consider ripping a mother from her babies. I’d had my mother ripped from me at the age of sixteen; never would I wish that kind of pain on another living thing, let alone be the cause of it.
Ducking beneath the jutting branch, I approached a half-collapsed armoire. A long sundress still hung over the doors, its straps trapped between them. Once white, it was now stained in varying shades of brown and green, the hem tattered and frayed.
Once upon a time, I would have balked at the idea of ever wearing something like this—I’d always been a fishnet stockings and combat boots kind of girl—but now that beautiful dresses had become a thing of the past, serving no purpose in this new, cruel world, I couldn’t help but wonder if I might have missed out on something. Touching it gently, lightly rubbing the fragile material between my fingers, I tried to envision what I would look like in something similar.
Catching a glimpse of myself in a nearby mirror—my sweat-stained tank top sagging at the neck and dirty cargo pants blown out at the knees—I nearly laughed out loud. I hadn’t had a decent meal in months and here I was romanticizing over a dress. One hard tug and the dress ripped free from the armoire. Tossing it away, I moved to the dresser, prying the top drawer open after several hard pulls on the wet and swollen wood. The entire structure was soggy and rotting, the clothing inside covered in mold, and home to several species of insects that scattered in all directions as I peered inside. With a frustrated sigh, I slammed the drawer shut.
The farmhouse had been the first semi-decent structure we’d come across in a long while, offering us a much-needed chance to rest and regain our bearings from the constant walking in unrelenting heat… I supposed it was too much to ask that it have a few other offerings as well.
“Find anything?”
Lucas brushed the webbing out of his way, sending the spider scurrying to what remained of its silken tapestry. Meandering through the bedroom, Lucas paused at the tree, tucking his dirty-blond waves back behind his ears. Even unkempt and with several weeks’ worth of grime caking his clothing, Lucas almost always appeared well rested and refreshed while the rest of the living tended to look more like me—with dark circles ringing their eyes and more than a few leaves stuck in their hair.
“Nope. Just some moldy undies and this lovely tree.” Patting the branch as I ducked beneath it once more, I eyed the closet over Lucas’s shoulder. I didn’t dare tell him about the family of opossums inside, fearing he’d have them roasting over an open fire in five seconds flat.
“And our hosts, of course.”Lucas gestured to the skeletons in the bed. “Nice way to go, right? You don’t see that anymore.”
A vision of my mother tucked in her bed surfaced—the whites of her eyes turned yellow; the rasping grate of her labored breathing echoing around an otherwise silent room.My breath hitched and shuddered, and I quickly shoved the memory away.
“True,” I replied dryly. “It’s hard to stay dead in bed when you’re busy trying to eat your neighbors.”
Lucas laughed, as I’d known he would, and the happy, soothing sound of him was an instant balm to my somber mood.
“Oh, come on, Willow. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have loved the chance to tear Mrs. Pickering’s face off?”
Mr. and Mrs. Pickering had been my neighbors once upon a time, an elderly couple from Asheville—our hometown. They’d never liked my family—mostly because we’d been a mixed-race family in a predominantly white town, but also becausewe didn’t keep up with the Joneses.Oftentimes my dad would go just a bit too long without mowing the lawn, and my mom’s idea of gardening was letting the weeds grow in abundance.
“You’ve got me there,” I said. “Still, the very last place I want to die isin a bed.” I stuck out my tongue. “How fucking boring.”
“I know, I know—you want to go out in a blaze of glory. How does it go again?” Smiling, Lucas leaned back casually against the tree branch.
“Well, I’m surrounded by Creepers,” I started. “And they’ve got me cornered. There’s no way out.”
“Mhm, mhm.” Lucas nodded exaggeratedly. “But are we talking about Runners or Shamblers?”
None of the dead could actually run, but some were faster than others. Their level of agility and speed depended on how far along they were in their decomposition. Though the Vaal Fever didn’t stop decomposition altogether, it certainly slowed it down.
“Runners, duh.” I scoffed. “I can’t claim glory if I’m taken out by a bunch of half-rotten slowpokes.”
“Of course not. Whatever was I thinking? So you’re surrounded by Runners and there’s no way out. Then what?”
“Hundreds of Runners,” I corrected. “Maybe even thousands.”
“Oh, so now it’s a mega horde?”
“You and Logan have been killed already—early on, actually.” I flashed Lucas a saccharine-sweet smile. “I mean, I tried to help, but you know what you guys are like.”
