Tyler was on the countdown timer now, and I had no idea the start button had already been pushed. If only I’d known what was happening down the hall. The chaos that had already broken out. I would have held him a little tighter, kissed him a little harder, and hugged him with a little more love. But that’s how this new world works now.
In a flash, everything can change.
Bronchial inflammation of the airways, that’s what the doctor called it. With the shit luck of being born premature, Tyler’s lungs were simply underdeveloped. The doc explained it would cause Tyler’s airways to swell, tighten, and produce a crap ton of mucus in his lungs. Something so easily controllable with a simple inhaler.
Things were different now.
Between oxygen therapy keeping his lungs moving in those first months of his life, and the daily medication regimen we had him on, I thought we had everything covered. After all, we had enough supplies to last quite a while…
Looking over toward the mirror, I saw the reflection of the two of us staring back. Taking a deep breath in and letting it out with another sigh, my eyes landed on the razor sitting on the sink. I still needed to shave.
With Tyler in the crib, I stepped back over to the faucet and slid some white lather across my cheek. Just then, a knock came to the steel door at the entrance to our room. Rolling my eyes, I dropped the razor and wiped my face clean. Shaving would have to wait a bit longer. Dignity would have to take a rain check.
Gently removing the mask from around Tyler’s face, I lifted him up from the crib on my way to the door while tickling him in the soft spot under his arm–savoring every moment. I grinned as a smile burst across his face, accompanied by a raw but genuine giggle. He stretched over my shoulder, trying to escape. Afraid there was no such luck for the little guy.
It didn’t matter that there was no peephole in the door. I already knew who patiently waited on the other side. Reaching down to the handle with a sigh, I noticed the ring resting on my finger before I turned it to the left.
If I had known what was already unfolding on the other side of the complex, I would have been far more cautious…
Opening the door with an audible metal on metal squeak, I flashed a friendly but unconvincing smile.
“Oh, you don’t have to fake it,” she said as she reached out to pull Tyler into her arms. “I know you didn’t get any sleep last night. Now give me that little man.”
Lazily nodding, I reached up to a small bit of cream that I’d missed and wiped it away with my hand. “Well, good morning to you too, Deanna.”
Deanna had been watching Tyler almost every day. She was a mother once, long ago, but never spoke of it. Luckily, the wrinkles on her face told me that her children were grown by the time the world went to shit. I knew that they weren’t here in Avalon, which by all accounts meant they were likely not of the living. She probably knew it too.
In this world, deep down, we all feared the worst.
Placing a hand on the doorframe, I noticed the slight limp that came with age as she stepped into the room. Her gray hair was pulled up into a bun, and she wore a multi-colored dress that fell loosely over her body.
Deanna loved Tyler, and I always felt comfortable leaving him with her. She was that perfect grandmother type, and I’d often wondered how she’d even managed to survive the initial days. In the end, I just figured she was determined to live because she was too afraid to die… just like the rest of us.
Picking up the bottle that I’d made earlier to find that it was empty, she shot me a “Thanks for the help, dick!” kinda look.
Holding my hand out in front of me, I pointed at my face. “I can’t even find time to shave.”
Shaking her head while walking over to replace the bottle, she looked out of the corner of her eye and asked, “What are you boys up to today?”
She was always looking for little nuggets of dirt on the inner workings of Avalon.
“Exterior defenses.”
She looked blankly out into the room, thinking through it for a moment before responding. “Outside the wall?”
“That’s what they tell me. Guess we’re gonna herd the Zs into the Dead Shed.”
“I hate that place. Seems so dangerous… What if those things get loose?”
Months ago, we’d made a conscious decision to construct a small compound outside the concrete walls of Avalon. The compound, made of mostly sturdy wooden planks, gave the appearance of an old oversized shed. Little would any would-be attackers know that it was filled to the brim with Zs that we’d been collecting in there for months. If anybody we couldn’t handle ever decided to storm our wall, the best defense would be an offense that started with letting those bastards loose to swarm the Yard.
“That’s the point, Deanna. They’re supposed to get loose… when we want them to,” I said, trying to fake a little confidence.
“I still don’t like it…”
Nodding, I walking over to the closet and pulled out a scuffed-up black helmet which matched the black body armor I was wearing. Flipping a switch on my belt, I heard a tiny squelch through a two-way radio that rested on my shoulder as I thought back to the origin of the suit. A remnant left over from the fallen men that once guarded Avalon. I always felt a little strange knowing that someone had likely died in it.
Reaching into my cabinet, I pulled out a nine mil that I’d been carrying around for the past few months. Having a gun is a funny thing, giving one a false sense of security. In the world of the dead, unless you were a crack shot, it was just a piece of metal that shot projectiles. Effective sometimes, yes, but it didn’t let you feel the crunch of the skull to know you’d done the job right.
For that, I needed my hammer.
Holstering the gun, I reached my hand back down into the cabinet, emerging with the hammer I’d had at my side since the beginning. My trusted hammer. I’d trade it for any gun when going up against the Zs. It’s hard to look back now and know how many of the dead that metal head has taken out. One thing was for certain though; I had gotten damn good at killing them.
In this new world, I’d become a dealer of death, and that hammer was my deck of cards.
Chapter 3
Pulling a breath of fire into my lungs, I looked up with my hammer drawn.
Glancing at the red blinking alarm clock resting by the bed, I realized it was nearly time to meet up with my team topside, leaving my son behind. Leaning down, I lifted him up and held his tiny body out in front of my face, capturing one good memory in my mind before leaving the compound. I’d need it to get me through the horror out there.
Reluctantly passing Tyler back to Deanna, I stepped over to the mirror and reached back down into the sink to pick up the razor. Just as I reapplied a nice white lather of cream across my face, I heard a squelch through the speaker on my shoulder, followed by a panicked voice, “We’ve got a stumbler!”
Nearly dropping the razor, I could feel my heart rate spike, beating across the chest plate of my body armor.
Looking up from the couch, Deanna could see the alarm in my face reflecting in the mirror. “What’s wrong?”
“We have an outbreak,” I hurriedly said while grabbing a brown towel to wipe the shaving cream from my chin.
Sweat had already started to bead up across my forehead. I was getting ready to set off for the hunt, and it was never easy. When the creatures first turned, they would be quick, and it usually took the whole lot of us to put them down.
Again, the speaker in my headset boomed, “It’s breaking out fast. It’s in the Med Center, and this bastard is tearing the place up.”