How To Survive Your Local Apocalypse/Issue 4

This is Issue 4 of How To Survive Your Local Apocalypse, entitled "New Discoveries".

Issue 4 - New Discoveries
Anna sighed as she stared at the plate before her on the table. She picked up the last spoonful of peas and chewed without any real thought to the taste and set the spoon back onto the empty plate. Finished with the rest of her food, Anna she left her plate and silverware on the table and went to lay down on the couch. She crossed her hands over her stomach and looked up at the ceiling, finding pictures in the random squiggles absentmindedly. She looked at those squiggles because she didn't want to think about what she really needed to. But she knew that she had to, and would.

Anna looked over to the "kitchen" in her house, and knew that she would need to go to town soon for food. It had only been ten days since she had left, and she shouldn't have to return this early, but she had been so panicked when she left and in such a rush that Anna had accidentally only grabbed one bag. The other one was still at the grocery store. It was only the day after when she woke up that she noticed. Anna had collected a bunch of blackberries to try to make up for it, much more than usual. She had been trying to eat those and the previously gathered snack foods just as much as the supplies she had recently gotten, but there was only so much food that those two alternatives would provide, and when all her food was gone, she couldn't just live on those snack foods and blackberries. Not only would those not last long enough, but it would be dangerously unhealthy.

Anna bit back the increasing anger inside her. Anger would get her nowhere, as usual. It was pretty much the same things making her angry in the last week. Her lack of ability to keep herself out of danger, her lack of judgement, and of course, the people in town. "Calvin" and his friends. Anna scowled at the thought. Why did they have to come to her town? Why couldn't they have just gone to another town? Or better yet, another state? Why was it that trouble always followed her?! What, did she have a target painted on her back or something? A sign that said "My name is Anna, victim for all survivor kind." Everything would be easier if those people had just stayed away!

The rational corner of her mind told her that it wasn't their fair to fault them for needing supplies. The emotional part of her that wasn't angry said that she should have just avoided them, then this wouldn't have happened. But it wasn't her fault that she had gotten scared and reacted harshly! She was just trying to keep herself safe. She thought that maybe if she was that cautious, then nothing could happen like last time.

Wanting to stop her mind from going down that path, Anna glanced over at the calender on the wall, and realized it was too late for that. June 1, 2016. Four more days until the anniversary of her best friend's death. Great, just what she needed on top of everything else. The weight of the sudden realization hit Anna hard and took her breath away. Abigail Bellamont had been her best friend since grade school. They'd quickly made friends, and had stayed that way well into high school. They had been so close that no crush, nor troubles, nor other loyalty could break them up. Even when the zombies had come, they had found each other, fought for each other, and helped each other through everything.

Tears formed in Anna's eyes as she bit her lip. They had comforted each other through the hard times, particularly those first few months. They had made it through three years together. They used to say that nothing could ever tear them apart but death. Neither girl had known at the time how right they had been.

Anna swallowed. She couldn't believe that it had been one year already. It didn't feel like that long to Anna. Maybe it was because of the nightmares that she still remembered losing Abby so vividly. Anna shut her eyes tight as the memories flooded her. May 14th of 2015, Abby and Anna had met a fellow survivor who was being attacked by a group of zombies, and losing. Typically they would have stayed away from other survivors, but Anna and Abigail couldn't just leave someone to the zombies. Looking back on it, Anna wished that she and Abby had left him there.

She ground her teeth as she forced the memories away. She opened her eyes only to be shocked by the tears on her face. She angrily scrubbed them from her face. Crying wouldn't get her anywhere. Neither would taking a trip down Memory Lane.

And the worst part was that she wasn't usually as moody and emotional as she had been for the last week and a half. She usually was happy and chipper and trying to look on the bright side of things. It was her way of coping with her issues. It was only when the date began to creep up on her that she started to become upset by the slightest things.

Anna sighed as she got up. She was so dysfunctional, having such random emotional outbursts.

She walked over to the table and grabbed the empty ice cream bucket she had left there earlier today. Anna walked back outside to the side of the house. She was going to go pick the rest of the blackberries off the bush.

Anna looked around at the gray all around her and felt her panic rise at the back of her throat. Her fear would have done the same thing except she was already terrified. Then she spotted him again, far off. Some part of Anna's mind registered the fact that she knew this was a dream, but while she knew it, she couldn't manifest the thought enough to be able to understand or remember the situation at hand.

He approached her slowly. Without even thinking, Anna stepped back, and called out to him, "Stay away from me!"

He paused in his steps. A sudden rush of hope filled her as she realized that while she may not be able to understand this, she had control, or at least some semblance of it. But just as that thought struck her, the dream shifted and changed. She was suddenly in her house, but it was different. It was her house, but all of the furniture was moved around in her dream, in very different places than they should have been, but Anna didn't notice it.

The room had a strange almost glow to it, as if the room was emitting an odd red feel to it. It was the only way she could have described it if she been asked to. With a few exceptions of black patches throughout the room that she couldn't see, she could see pretty good, even though the room was very dark. It probably had something to do with the red glow.

For some reason, she had no memory of coming to her house. She didn't know how she had gotten here, or why she had decided to come here so apparently suddenly. She felt like there was something that happened previous that she knew, but she could not access the memory in her mind, just brief flashes and feelings that she forgot as soon as they came, always there lingering just on the edge of remembering and forgetting.

Anna turned around in studying her surroundings, when she spotted two other people in the room. One standing with their back to her looking down at the other, who was laying down on the floor, or at least she thought so, all she could see was their toes pointing up while the rest of them was hidden behind the couch. Anna wondered why that person was laying there on the ground. It had to be uncomfortable, not to mention that there weren't many reasons why someone would just be laying on the ground, especially when there was a perfectly good couch right next to them. Maybe they had dropped something on the floor?

The first one, the one standing up, drew her attention to him when he looked up and saw her. He smiled at her, which made her fight off the urge to shiver in dread. Something about the look in his cold blue eyes chilled her to the bone.

"Anna." He breathed.

Anna shuddered this time. Even though she felt as if she had before, for some reason she could not remember ever seeing this man. She instinctively knew that she should though, just as she knew that she should fear him.

The man, seemingly oblivious to her inner thoughts, stepped to the side and becoming closer to the wall than the couch, and gestured to the person laying on the ground. "Come Anna, and see your handiwork." Anna was confused by that statement. What handiwork did the man speak of? She didn't remember anything she had done recently worth mentioning. She felt a sense of foreboding enter her being, as she stared at him and heard his words repeat in her mind. Her curiousity and confusion got the best of her though and she slowly moved forward, just to the side of the man, but still before him and the mystery person's feet. She looked down at the feet in front of her, and cocked her head in recognition at the shoes the person was wearing. They were white and purple tennis shoes that she had seen before. Abby. They belonged to her friend Abby. Was someone wearing Abby's shoes? Or was Abby the mystery person on the ground? But why would Abby be laying on the ground?

Anna looked at the man next to her, and though his smile was happy and encouraging, it didn't make her feel any safer around him. She felt as if she should be watching his every move to make sure he didn't attack her, but that was ridiculous. Anna chose to instead walk forward that little bit she needed to to see her friend. Maybe Abigail could explain all this weirdness to her, because Anna had no idea what was going on. Sure enough, when Anna moved behind the couch to look, she saw Abby. Which just further confused Anna because Abby had her eyes open, which meant she was awake, so why hadn't she gotten up when she heard the man talking to Anna?

She leaned forward to get a better look at her friend. Abby's eyes were wide open, just as Anna had seen before, and her lips were slightly parted. But the strange part was that her friend's face was frozen in a mask of pain and terror. That scared Anna. She was just about to ask Abby what was wrong when she spotted something that made her hands fly to her mouth as she uttered a cry of horror. Anna shook as she observed the bloody mess on the front of Abby's blue and gray striped shirt. The deep rusty red color was seeping into everything it touched, the shirt, and spreading every moment in an even bigger circle. She noticed a hole in the fabric of Abby's shirt, in-between her stomach and chest.

She turned around to the man, dropping her hands. That eerie smile was still on his face. Anna longed to demand what had happened and who had done this, but she was frozen. His smile just widened. "What do you think, Anna? Do you like what you did?" Anna's eyes widened. Her ability to speak was restored by surprise. "W-what I did? I didn't do this!"

He just took a step closer to her, making Anna try to step back before she realized that.. that Abby was behind her blocking her escape. "Of course you did, Anna. Just look at your hands." Anna did, and cried out at the discovery. Her previously perfectly normal, clean hands were now shaking and covered in blood, and it inspired even more terror in her, as she held her hands away from her body.

"W-who's blood is this? And h-how d-did it get on my hands?" Anna asked him in a shaking voice, knowing the answer to the first question, but not wanting to believe it. He just looked at her, having never broken eye contact since he first looked at her. "You know who's it is, Anna. Just as you know how it got there. You killed Abigail, Anna. You remember."

Anna shook her head furiously. "No.. NO! I didn't kill her! I don't know how this got on my hands!" She stated desperately as she looked at her hands. She looked up at him only to realize something. "You.. you did this, didn't you?! You killed her!" She cried out in fear and outrage.

He shook his head seriously, the smile suddenly gone "No, I had nothing to do with this, Anna. You did it, you did it all." Anna stared at him open mouthed, horrified, but, for some reason she believed him. She believed that she had killed her best friend. And it made her even more scared. She shouldn't believe him, she knew that she would never hurt Abby, but she felt the disbelief of the that statement encroaching into her mind, against her decreasing will. The intrusive thought was spreading through her mind like an incurable disease.

She looked down at her hands again, and gasped. Because she now had a large kitchen knife in her hands, covered in blood that occasionally dripped onto the wooden floor beneath her feet.

"No.. " She whispered.

"Yes." He counteracted, his voice clear as day.

Anna's hands loosened around the object as a sound of distress left her lips before the knife clanked against the ground, the sound somehow both muffled to her and as loud as if a gun had been shot off right by her ear. Everything felt fuzzy, and numb, except for him. The only thing in focus was him. He was coming closer until her stood right in front of her. "You did it, Anna. It's your fault Abigail is dead, and you know it."

A flash of silver light to her left caught her attention. She looked down only to see the knife, now clean, in his hands. "No.." She said, for a much different reason now. He seemed to understand her reasoning for this outburst, and regained a cruel smile. It wasn't the smile though, that scared her the most. It was the genuine joy in his eyes. "You killed, Abigail," He said coming even closer to her as she was frozen in place. He leaned forward until his mouth was right next to her ear. "And now you've killed yourself." He whispered right as he plunged the knife straight into Anna's heart.

Anna screamed out into the night as she sat upright in her bed, her hands clasped tightly to her chest where she had been stabbed. Except she hadn't been stabbed. Not really. Even though she knew it wasn't actually real, she still ran her hands over herself to check for any damage or wounds, gasping for breath and sobbing desperately. When she did not find any, she didn't breath any easier. Anna's breath was still harsh and panicked, her eyes were shut tightly, although moving frantically beneath her lids, as she tried to get a grip on reality and manage her thinking, because she wasn't entirely convinced that this wasn't a dream.

Ten minutes later, Anna was sitting on the couch with the lights turned on, a cup of juice in her hands and a pack of crackers next to her on the small wooden table to the left of the couch she sat on. She took a tentative sip of her juice, her hands still trembling with the aftershock of the nightmare, and let the cup rest back against her crossed legs, before deciding to put the handled red cup onto the table. She grabbed a cracker from the pack and chewed on it quietly.

Her mind was silent right now. Everything about her was calm after her nightmare. She supposed that it was because after a dream that intense, everything else would seem numb-like in comparison, but she didn't know for sure. It wasn't like she was a psychiatrist or something. She also supposed that had a psychiatrist actually been there, that they would have told her that her dream was the reflection of her subconscious guilt over Abby's death. Yeah, that sounded right. But no matter the fact that she knew it wasn't her fault, at least not directly, she also knew that her actions had inadvertently caused Abby's death. Had it not been for her, Abby would have been alive. She was the one who had believed all of Matthew's lies, even when Abby had told her the truth. She was also the one who had nearly gotten herself killed, not Abby. Abby had just taken the bullet for her. Or rather, knife. Abby had jumped in front of Anna when Matthew had gone to kill her.

Anna would love to say that she didn't believe Abby's words a bit and that she had never seen it coming, but honestly, she had. Even though Matthew had whispered his words into her ear just as he might have poured poison in it, Anna had still suspected him, and she had known deep inside that Abby was right. She just hadn't wanted to admit that the person she loved could be so horrible. And that's what made it so much worse. It might have been alright if she had actually been completely blind to his faults, but she hadn't been. She had felt the suspicion that Abby had felt many times many times, and instead of believing her best friend, she had let that poison seep into her, and cloud her thoughts. She had accused Abby of being a liar, and had called her jealous. Eventually, Abby had left extremely upset and angry, only to panic return right away, just in time to save Anna.

Anna felt the hot tears streaming down her face, but for once, she didn't bother to wipe them away. It was the first time in a while that she had let herself cry. She felt the weight of all her mistakes and misjudgements rest on her shoulders. It wasn't a very nice feeling.

She pressed her hand to her face and her eyes squeezed shut, a gasp forced its way through before a sob made her chest ache and shake with despair. She leaned over with both hands on her mouth until she was laying on her side on the couch with legs curled up, her cheeks damp from the tears cascading from her eyes. Every sob made her chest ache, and she didn't know if it was from emotional or physical pain, or even both. The bottom of her stomach felt like a pit that ached almost as much as her chest. Her throat felt like it was closed up, and every sob was harder than the last. Eventually, Anna fell asleep, her hands curled up to her chest, the tracks left behind by her tears shining in the light.

Anna awoke several hours later to warm sunlight streaming in onto her face from the window. She left out a sleepy breath as she sat up, her black hair falling halfway across her face. Anna wiped her cheek sleepily, and felt the dried tear strains, the only physical evidence of her breakdown last night. Anna stood up, stretching and yawning like a cat, and walked over to the kitchen to get breakfast. She grabbed the box of cereal and poured the rest of the Coco Puffs into a bowl and went back to sit down on the couch. She grabbed some of the cereal with her hand and ate it, feeling completely regenerated and rested. She had the deep dreamless sleep she had fallen into yesterday to thank for that. She couldn't believe that she had had such a good, deep rest. Even when she didn't have nightmares, no matter the intensity, Anna still slept like an apocalypse survivor, always ready in her sleep to wake back up just in case there was trouble. Last night she said slept like she had back when life was normal. She didn't know what she felt about that.

Not wanting to dwell to much on last night, Anna mused something normal and mundane. If she should dye her hair again when this black washed out. She had dyed it a few months ago because she had never done it before and had wanted to try it, and because she had been looking for a new her as well. She had gone through a couple rough patches since last year, and in the last and most recent one she had decided to dye her naturally brown hair black.

Anna finished her breakfast and carried the bowl to the kitchen, while she wondered how long she could put off the trip to town. Anna's thoughts suddenly turned to last night, when she cried herself to sleep with guilt and regret and longing, and realized that even though she had killed him, Matthew was still controlling her life. She felt her anger rise. She grabbed her weapons and the other bag she hadn't left at the grocery store and walked out the door, before she headed to town. She would be damned if she let anyone else do the same thing. She was going to go get the supplies that she needed, new people or not. She wouldn't let them make the choices for her. She would not let her fear dictate her life any longer.

She got on her mode of transportation and pulled into town, the four wheeler sounding much too loud to her own ears. Anna got off of it, and noticed the dark gray Pathfinder at the Dollar General across the street from the grocery store. Anna swallowed her nervousness and grabbed her bag in one hand, and set her shotgun across her shoulder. She turned her attention away from the car and whoever may be over there and went into the grocery store. She quickly spotted her bag of supplies and grabbed it. She also filled up her other bag from the same aisle it had been left in with just as many supplies as the bag she had left if not more.

While Anna was collecting her things, just across the street Jack and Jean were gathering a few extra things; candy, sunglasses, lighters, glass jars, baseball hats, all the odds and ends that one needs that can be found together in few retailers. At least they had been doing that, until Anna had pulled up to the grocery store.

Jack was just grabbing a pack of Trident gum, when he heard the running of an engine down the road and looked up out of the store's front broken windows. Soon enough the four wheeler was in Jack's line of sight, and he couldn't believe what he saw when he saw a girl park it. He looked over his shoulder to Jean who was also looking up.

"Jean, come here, that's the girl! That's the girl me and Calvin met." Jean came over to Jack's side and saw the girl climbing off her vehicle. Jean nodded. "She looks just like you described her." The young African-American woman said. She stood next to Jack looking out of the "window", leaning against the counter in front of them. They lost sight of the girl as she went inside the store with her gun and bag.

"Jack, didn't Morgan just go into the store to get some bread?" She said with a tilt of her head to indicate said store. Jack nodded. "Yeah."

They looked at each other. "I think we should go in there just in case." Jack said.

Morgan picked up another loaf of white bread and put it in the store basket with a few other loaves. She was about to grab one more and leave when she heard the unmistakable sound of glass crunching under one's foot just inside the store's front doors. Morgan heard the person rush around in the aisle next to her, and heard the the sound of things being pulled off the shelf and dropped into a container of some sort, she imagined.

While listening, she had unconsciously turned her body towards the aisle next to her. She moved back towards the bread shelf and grabbed one more loaf.

Morgan had heard only one pair of feet and only one person collecting things, and she had a weapon in any case, so she was not afraid when she decided to go investigate. She carried the basket of bread by the handle in one hand as she walked to the next aisle and paused just inside of it. She saw a young caucasian woman look up at her, presumably because she had heard her footsteps. The woman looked about Morgan's age, maybe a little older, of average build with straight black hair and green eyes. She was pretty in a normal person way. She seemed like she might be the girl Calvin and Jack had encountered, that was the way they had described her. After they had gotten to the hotel, Daniel had asked Jack and Cal what had happened in the store, and they had described what had happened in their own words and with more details, although Jack more theatrically than Calvin.

The woman was about halfway down the aisle kneeling to grab some things from the bottom of the shelf. She stood up as Morgan walked up to her. She looked warily at Morgan, but stood her ground. Morgan stuck out her hand with a smile and said, "Hi, my name's Morgan." The woman looked cautiously at the hand before looking back up at Morgan, before putting her own hand in Morgan's.

"Anna."