The First 30 Days (PUBLISHED)

Eighteen - Day 9

     I slept like the dead for long enough that when Shawn shook me to wake me up, the day had long since turned into night. Outside the high office window was the deep black of the middle of the night. The office was pitch black, causing my other senses to make up for my lack of sight. Quiet noises that I couldn't place came from outside of the building from time to time, keeping me on high alert as the endless hours crawled by. If it wasn't for the fact that there was another person sleeping on that couch just feet away, in the next room, I might have lost more than a little of my sanity waiting for the sun to come up.

With great relief, I finally noted that the pitch black outside of that window was turning a deep blue. I concentrated on the gradual change in color, watching as it slowly morphed into dawn.

The light was not as bright as I had expected, but the trees stretching their branches over everything in the area had blocked a lot of the afternoon sun the day before. So I shouldn't have been surprised. Either way, I was just glad to see the sun.

In the next room, Shawn had slept like the dead since he dropped into my vacated spot on the couch. He had barely moved. I wondered briefly if I should wake him as the sun rose, but decided against the idea. We had both been completely exhausted the day before. Even after sleeping for what must have been more than six hours, I still felt like I could have slept for another entire day. I knew that he must be feeling the same.

I passed the time by poking around the small office. There wasn't much in there that I thought could be of much use for us. I did find a small flashlight in one of the desk drawers that I scooped up and added to our bag of supplies. After the night before, spent sitting in the dark, I was indescribably happy with my find. I was perched on the corner of the desk, slowly picking apart a muffin and eating it while listening to a bird singing loudly nearby, when I heard Shawn getting up in the next room.

He emerged from the darkened room a minute later, still staggering slightly from sleep and rubbing his face vigorously. "Morning," he didn't spare me a glance as he greeted me with a voice still rough from sleep.

"Morning," I watched as he wandered the office. He checked the chair that was still jammed under the door knob, stood on his toes to peer outside, and finally stopped his pacing long enough to take a few bites out of a muffin. "Nothing happened while you were sleeping." It was probably unnecessary to tell him this, he would have known if anything went wrong in the night, but I felt compelled to say it out loud. For both of our benefit.

I received a grunted reply as my answer.

Taking the hint, I'd already figured out on previous mornings that Shawn was not much of a talker when he first got up, I kept quiet. By the time that he had finished his breakfast, he was looking decidedly more lively.

Dusting the crumbs off of his hands, he finally looked my way. "We should get busy. We need to find water and we should take a better look around the camp. Just to be sure that there aren't and nasty surprises waiting out there for us."

I slid off of my perch on the edge of the desk, ready to get out of the small room. Being shut in, in the oppressive dark, had left me jittery. I was used to more light and freedom, and after nearly an entire day spent in the car just the day before, I was looking forward to being able to move around today. Of course, moving around came with the drawback of having to be on the constant alert for zombies, but way out here in the middle of nowhere, I was hoping that we wouldn't find anything of that variety.

Our first stop was the kitchen where we made a more thorough search for supplies. It was obvious that the food meant for the campers had started to be brought in, starting with the less time sensitive items. Prepackaged snacks made up most of our find. I opened one cabinet to find giant sized containers of the powdered stuff that was meant to taste like tea with lemon. I hated lemon tea. And there wasn't any water, anyhow.

I had tried the faucet, but no water came out. Seeing that, Shawn had went to the nearest light switch on the wall. We had long ago agreed not to use lights at night for fear of drawing too much attention, but now he flipped the switch.

We both looked overhead, at the row of industrial lighting that lined the ceiling.

Nothing happened. Looking around, in search of anything that may have been turned on by the switch, I felt fingers of unease furl through me. Nothing seemed to have been activated by his flick of that switch. Striding to a refrigerator near me, I pulled the door open. The inside light didn't activate. While not exactly warm in there, it wasn't as cold as a refrigerator should be, either.

"I think there's no power."

With a grim look on his face, Shawn answered me, "It was bound to happen, but I was hoping it would take longer."

I didn't know why it hadn't occurred to me that things like electricity would eventually go away. If there was no one to keep working to provide modern conveniences, those conveniences wouldn't last. I had spent my entire life within city limits, comfortably surrounded by things like electricity and running water. I couldn't fathom living without a flushing toilet.

Disappointed by our overall lack of success in searching the main building, by mid morning we had moved our search to the smaller outbuildings scattered across the grounds. They had, so far, proven to be all exactly the same. Small, with one window and one door, and three sets of bunk beds holding dusty mattresses crammed inside. That was it. Somewhere around the tenth cabin, I felt myself losing enthusiasm for our task.

Birds flitted through the thick tree canopy overhead. We had worked our way along the string of cabins, heading deeper and deeper into the forest surrounding the camp. To someone who had spent some time in the woods before, it would probably have been peaceful. To me, it was anything but. The inability to see more than a dozen yards kept me on edge. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was someone or something out there, watching us.

My palms were sweating. Shifting the kitchen knife that I had grabbed from the kitchen from one hand to the other, I watched around us nervously. So focused on the danger that I feared may be lurking in the trees, that I missed the danger that was right under our noses.

Taking the two steps up to the newest cabin door, bat slung over his shoulder by one hand, Shawn reached for the cabin door with the other. He had no more than turned the knob when the door burst open and a zombie came leaping through.

Knocked off of the steps by the force of being hit by the door, Shawn landed on his back in the dirt, a stunned expression on his face. Hissing, tangled hair flying behind her, the zombie landed in a crouch over top of him. Shawn's reflexes brought the bat from his shoulder to use to stop her from advancing any further, but it was at an awkward angle. I could immediately see the strain as he pressed the bat into her chest, just managing to fend off her assault.

I had watched the two of them fly off of the top step and land in the dirt in shock, unable to believe for a moment what my eyes were telling me. When the zombie screeched a terrible scream, inches from his face, the spit visibly flying from her mouth and into his cringing face, it shocked me out of the immobility that had held me in it's grip.

"No!" I lunged forward, unsure what I was going to do, but knowing that I had to do something. I couldn't just stand back and watch as the only friend I had left in the world was killed.