This Isn't the Zombie Apocalypse

36. Ana's Pen Dies (And Some Other Things)

A sickening stillness came over the room, and I was frightened to find out why.

But I knew. I knew.

Jonah did, too. He jerked around, looked down at his wife, his daughter still cradled in her arms, and then he collapsed. No sound escaped his lips, but his body shuddered. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Ana was crawling away to Calvin. I didn't look—didn't dare—but I knew when she reached him. "Uncle—Uncle Alex?" Her voice was tremulous. There was shifting. I could imagine her shaking Calvin, trying in vain to wake him. "Uncle—" she hiccupped on the words. "Uncle Alex?" She made a choking sound, like there wasn't enough air in the room. Took a shuddering breath. Restrained a sob.

Ana crying over her dead great uncle snapped Jonah out of whatever weird mindset he was in, because he whirled around with a roar, gun going off. I rushed forward, dropping the bat instead to scoop up Ana bridal style and carry her out of the room as fast as I could. My backpack banged against my back, but I ignored it, bursting through the door just as Jonah shot Calvin's dead body.

I raced out of the next room to the stairs, leaping up three at a time. I tried to jiggle the doorknob, but with my hands occupied I couldn't open it, and Ana seemed determined to scream, "He's dead! My uncle's dead!" as loud as possible in my ear.

"I know! Dam—!" I shifted Ana, tried to kick the door down—which, to let everyone know, does not work in real life—but that didn't work. "Dang it!" I growled, and then I threw her over my right shoulder. Much better. I opened the door with fumbling hands and ran through the house with Jonah shouting, "You killed them! You killed them!" behind me.

It was all very stressful.

I (most likely) ripped the front door off its hinges when I flew through it, but I was too busy digging the car keys out of my pocket to care. I pressed the button, praying for it to unlock, unlock, unlock. And it did. I tossed Ana in—feeling bad when she winced and worrying about the blood and her wounds, though there was no time to fret—and jumped in after her in the spot behind the front seats on the floor.

When nothing happened, I peeked out the window, but Jonah wasn't doing much of anything besides waving around his gun. I didn't think he wanted the leave the house, because he never stepped foot out of the broken front door.

Then he did do something. He took four shots at the car. I curled myself around Ana, begged myself not to become ghost-like, and waited. A tail light burst. A back tire popped. The window behind me blew in. And a bullet lodged itself in my shoulder.

For a terrible moment, I thought I'd bleed out all over again, but this time it'd be over Ana's already bloody form, but that didn't happen. A shiver raced up my spine, and I became translucent. The bullet fell out. And I was fine.

Jonah, on the other hand, wasn't. He gave an agonized scream and stalked back into his home. Ana and I were safe for the time being.

oOo

I bandaged Ana as best I could (which she quickly corrected) and packed enough supplies for her in my backpack, including a roll of Calvin's treasured toilet paper.

Even Ana's prized purple pen was packed away.

After that, because there wasn't a spare tire—and I still couldn't manage to make myself get behind the wheel, even after all this deadly business—we took off and left the dirty, scratched, ruined BMW behind. "Sorry Sarah," I murmured.

We left the abandoned neighborhood, and we walked for hours in no specific direction though the rain before we stopped for the day underneath a group of trees. Water trickled down through the leaves and branches to plop down on our heads. Ana was even slower than before, smaller, more like the dying girl she was. I didn't have the heart to tell her to run when she was like this. Her breath was thin, and her chest was tight. Her heart throbbed weakly. But she persevered, and when she ripped off the wrapper on her water bottle and asked for her purple pen, I didn't question it.

In a shaky hand, she wrote:

"A man who lives life fully is prepared to die at any time."

Alexander C—

And she stopped. Gripped the purple pen, gave it a shake. Tried to finish her uncle's name. Tried to finish his makeshift tombstone. "It's out of ink," she told me softly. Tonelessly. What she had written smudged under her hand.

Then she cried. Doubled over, curled in a tight ball. She cried over that temporary tombstone and its unfinished state and her dead Uncle Alexander Calvin.

I took the small, flimsy paper, placed it to the side, used an extra bottle of Germ-X as a paper weight, watched as it sunk in the mud and lost the rest of its color. And I came over to Ana, rubbed her back, folded myself around her, tried to soothe her as she sobbed, "I wasn't re—ready. I wasn't— I wasn't pre—prepared for him to— for him to—"

"Shhh..." I hushed, smoothing over her tangled, stringy hair. I hid my tears where she couldn't see them, couldn't hear them.

And she cried some more.