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“So then you plan on keeping them around past spring?” Matty asked. He tried to make it seem casual, but I could hear the underlying excitement in his voice.
“Why do you care so much?” I asked.
“Because if they’re here, I don’t have to feel bad about leaving you alone. I’ll be able to be happy knowing that you’re happy.”
“Matty, it isn’t your job to ensure I’m happy or cared for.”
“Why not?” he asked, standing. “It shouldn’t have been your job, but you did it anyway. Now it’s my turn.” He went outside to leave me alone with my thoughts. He was a sweet kid, but if he thought that now that he was grown, I would stop worrying about him and trying to take care of him, he was wrong.
We turned in early and were back up just as the sky began to lighten. We said our goodbyes to Matty and Gray. I gave them several warnings until I was practically dragged out of the house. We walked down the drive, and I gave Matty one last wave before the road curved, and we couldn’t see the house anymore.
“Come on, Honey Bee, they’ll be fine,” Boone said, patting me on the back.
“I know. Let’s just get this done. I feel better when we’re all safely tucked away at home,” I said. “Now, where exactly are we going?”
“Well, we don’t have a map, but follow us. We’ll find the town,” Ethan said cheerily. I could tell that as much as they liked living with me, they had missed this and were happy for an adventure after spending so much time wandering from place to place.
“Ok. Do you think someone should start making a map, especially of the roads, so we know how to get back by car?” I was determined to be positive and expected everything to work out as planned.
“Couldn’t hurt,” Caleb answered. I pulled a folded piece of paper from my back pocket along with a pencil and began jotting down notes. I knew the roads around here, but soon we wouldn’t be following the roads. Just before the turn-off to get to Henry and Susan’s farm Pike veered right and led us into the woods. I made a note and then put my paper and pencil away. Now that we were in the woods, we needed to be more alert.
Sure, we could encounter wild animals, but there could also be zombies lurking or, even worse, humans. All conversation stopped as we quietly and carefully picked our way through the trees, listening for any sign that we weren’t alone. We stopped at a small waterfall at about noon to refill our canteens and eat some food.
“So far, so good,” I commented as I dipped my head into the pond. The trees were thinning a bit, and it was getting hot. I sat back up, and the four of them were giving me funny looks. “What? I’m hot.”
“Yes, you are,” Caleb said, making me roll my eyes.
“So how much further do you think?” I asked Ethan, our de facto trail guide.
“I think only about an hour or two more. The town itself is kind of hard to find. The forest grew back around it, hiding it, so we’ll have to keep our eyes open for signs of it,” he replied. We finished eating and took off again. After walking for about thirty minutes, the sound of someone or something moving through the woods reached us. Silently, we crouched down and watched the direction the sound had come from.
Slowly, about seven zombies came into view, stumbling through the forest. “What got them moving around?” Pike whispered. I clamped my hand over his mouth as the nearest zombie stopped and turned toward us. The forest undergrowth hid us reasonably well, and it soon continued moving in the direction it had been headed.
Once the group passed us, I stood silently and took them out with my crossbow. When I was halfway through the group, the ones ahead turned from the sound of the other zombies falling and spotted me. Their paces quickened when they saw what was probably the first food source they had seen in a while. It took the three remaining zombies forever to get back to me. Boone watched my back to ensure there weren’t any slowpokes to sneak up on us while the others fanned out and got behind the zombies.
They lunged for them, quickly planting their knives through the skulls. “Well, that was fun,” I said as I went around and collected my arrows, smacking them against a tree to knock as much brain gunk off of them as I could.
“Yeah, I was honestly beginning to wonder if it could still be considered the zombie apocalypse if all the zombies were gone. It’s good to know we’re still in the Age of Zombies. The world hasn’t passed us by too much while we’ve been in our little slice of paradise,” Pike joked, making us laugh.
“Ok, onwards,” Ethan said. We quickly fell in line behind him to continue our trek. We didn’t come across any more zombies, but we did stumble onto a beautiful pond home to many ducks.
“Next spring, we need to come out here and see if we can catch some of these! Maybe even build them a little pond or something. Raising ducks could be good. More eggs and meat,” I said.
“We’ll add it to your already long list of things you want to do in the spring,” Caleb said dryly.
“Hey! Just be glad I’m including you in those plans, buster. Keep it up, and I’ll toss your ass out once the first flower blooms,” I said, wagging my finger at him. Faster than I could react, his hand snapped out and wrapped around my wrist, yanking me into his arms.
“Before that first flower blooms, sweetheart, you won’t be able to remember a time when we weren’t in your life,” he growled out as he began tickling me and making me laugh.
“Uhh, hey guys?” Ethan called from further around the pond. We all grabbed our stuff and quickly caught up to him. When we reached him, he pointed to what was left of an old wooden circular structure with a dome-shaped roof. “I think we might be close,” he said excitedly.
I looked back at the pond with a calculating eye. “I bet you this used to be one of those places! What the hell were they called? Parks! I bet this was a park!”
We all turned away from the park towards the dense vegetation behind us as a group. Ethan did say the town was hidden. We all shared a look before Boone pulled out a machete and approached the wall of plants. He started hacking away, carving a path through it until suddenly, there wasn’t anything left to chop. I took Pike’s hand as he pulled me through the hole Boone had made behind him. In front of us was a slightly overgrown ghost town, abandoned and forgotten. A sign to our right said the town was called Wilsonville.
“Ok, I know you guys came through here before but remember, we don’t know what happened here. For all we know, there is a high school gymnasium filled with a town’s worth of zombies who drank the funny Kool-aid together. Let’s try not to wake them up, agreed?”
“Agreed,” they said in unison. I spotted the four-story hospital a few blocks away. That was our first stop. I took the lead, and we made our way down the street, unaware we already had eyes on us.
