All Your Promises Meant Nothing

“Daddy, I don’t like this.”

“Just a little more, sweetheart. We have to get there before it gets dark.”

“My feet hurt.”

“Do you want me to carry you?”

“No, I’m a big girl!”

“If you get tired, just tell me. Maybe we’ll find a car up ahead.”

“A car, a car! Bright red and shiny!”

“I don’t know if we’ll be that lucky, but we can see. We don’t have much longer now anyway.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Aria?”

“I miss Mommy.”

“I know, sweetheart. Me too.”

*

The noise from the alarm I set jolts me awake. It has a tinny and shrill sound, like it’s on its last legs. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did; I dug it out of a trash heap on my last scavenging run.

I wipe my eyes and yawn as I sit up in the cot. My eyes scan the room, a habit I learned from childhood, and my hand hovers near the rifle I sleep with each night.

There’s no one else but me in the bunker, but I still always check. Just in case.

What follows is a routine I’ve adopted over the past few months. I open a can of beans and eat straight from the can. No matter how I prolong the eating with small mouthfuls, though, it’s always gone too soon. And my stomach rumbles in want for more than just two cans of food each day, one in the morning and one at night. Until I leave the bunker again, I need to keep as many provisions as possible. I haven’t restocked in what feels like an eternity.

Then I turn to the small radio and tinker with the dial, giving precious time to each station just in case someone’s broadcasting in the great wide somewhere. I know it’s probably useless—even if someone’s still out there, how convenient it would be if they had access to an abandoned radio tower—but the monotony of listening to halts of static soothes me in a way nothing else quite does.

When my time with the radio ends—nothing again today—I sit back and check my ammunition supply. I take inventory every day, obsessively, just in case something went missing in the night. As much as I’d like to believe I’m safe in the hidden underground bunker of my dad’s old friend Mort—may he rest in peace—I can’t take any chances.

Taking chances is what lost me Dad in the first place.

The slog towards dinnertime means that, by the time I’m opening the second can of the day, I’m ravenous. I wolf down the food, allowing myself to be greedy for once even though it’ll probably mean I have a stomach ache later. Oh well. The pain will be a distraction from the nothingness of everything else.

The truth is that I’m stalling. I have to go aboveground again soon. I dread it like how I used to feel before going to sleep alone at night when I was little, afraid the monsters under the bed would come out and eat me.

It was a premonition of things to come because the monsters came not long after.

*

“Dad, I don’t want to learn how to shoot.”

“You have to, Aria. What’ll you do when I’m gone?”

“Don’t talk like that. You’re not that old.”

“You know I’m not talking about age here, Aria. There are worse things out there that could do me in.”

“That’s why we have the bunker. We have supplies that could last us years here. Right, Mort?”

“Arthur, if she doesn’t want to learn, you can’t force her.”

“Shut up, Mort. She’s my daughter, not yours. She needs to listen to reason.”

“Dad, what do you expect me to do? Go practice target shooting with a horde of zombies?”

“No. We’ll build up to that. For now, I want you to learn how to hunt. You need to be able to feed yourself when the supplies run dry. Mort and I aren’t going to live forever.”

“...fine. I guess I have to.”

“Good girl.”

*

The next morning is much of the same—I don’t even know what day it could possibly be—but I don’t open a can right away. Instead, I sit by the radio and turn the dial backward and forward, listening, so ready to hear something that gives me hope.

Another day, nothing. I don’t know whether to sigh or scream.

But then, faintly, I hear music. Classical music. Like something from one of my mother’s ballet performances.

The music sparks hope within me. “Dad?” I whisper.

I keep the radio turned up as loud as it can go while I hurriedly begin to pack a satchel I can carry a long distance. A few cans of food, some extra clothes, ammunition. I strap the rifle to my back. I move so fast that I’m practically dizzy by the time I’m ready. The music reaches a crescendo that almost brings tears to my eyes.

The nearest radio tower has a working signal. I know it’s insane, but I need to see if someone’s up there broadcasting. I need to know if my dad’s alive after all.

Even if it costs me everything, I need to have closure so that I can move ahead in this hopeless world.

*

“I can’t believe it. Dad, are you sure?”

“Mort couldn’t outrun it. I’m sorry, Aria. He’s gone.”

“But it was just a supply run. You—you were just going to get more stuff. And there hasn’t been a zombie sighting in weeks.”

“Well, this one wasn’t with a pack. It was a lone wolf. No idea where it came from. And Mort—he didn’t have time to shoot the damn thing before it got him.”

“Is—is he dead then? Or is he going to turn into one of them?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. It happened too fast. I had to get out of there or I would have been next.”

“I’m glad you made it back. But Mort—I mean—I don’t know how to feel—”

“Let’s just hope that he did die from that first bite. That’s the best case scenario here.”

“And if he did become one of them? What do we do?”

“I’ll have to shoot him if I see him again. That’s all there is to it.”

“Dad, I don’t know how much more I can take.”

“I know. It’s been a rough few years. And it’s not getting better. But we have to hope for the best.”

“Is there really anything left to hope for?”

“Well, we still have each other. That’s something.”

“Dad?”

“What is it?”

“If that happened to you, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you.”

“Aria, let’s just hope that doesn’t happen. Okay?”

“...okay.”

*

The first few miles of the abandoned highway, I don’t see anything. There are a few burned-out shells of cars, but there’s no point in checking them. The last time I went this route, my dad and I had salvaged as much as we could from the vehicles. And even the cars that had been in okay shape wouldn’t start.

The radio tower looms on a hill just off the next exit. I’m so close that I can practically hear the refrain of the music I heard earlier. It’s like a siren’s call leading me to a better end for me, for Dad, and for everything we once cherished.

Just a little more and—

Then I hear it. A guttural sound, rising from the ground, and I swivel my head to see something begin to stumble out of the nearest wreckage of a car.

I have my rifle in my hands within moments, and I let loose a warning shot in the hope that the zombie will get spooked or disoriented.

Of course it doesn’t work. I’m knocked off of my feet when the thing lunges at me, the smell of rot overtaking my senses. But I fight back by kicking the thing in the chest before it can force me completely to the ground.

Then my rifle’s up, ready to blow the thing’s head off, until I see a familiar heart-shaped locket hanging from a cord around the zombie’s neck.

I know that necklace.

It was the same one I saw Mort wear—a memento carrying the pictures of his wife and daughter who died in the first wave of what became the apocalypse.

“Mort?” I whisper, so shocked and bewildered for an instant—right before what was once Mort, my dad’s best friend, goes after me again, hot breath so near to my neck.

But I’m quicker as I blast the zombie’s head with multiple shots from the rifle.

I don’t realize I’m crying until I’m sprinting away, leaving behind yet another memory brought to dust.

*

“Dad?”

“What is it, Aria?”

“Do you think we’re the only ones left alive on this planet?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

“I don’t know if we can stay forever in this bunker.”

“Just take it day by day, Aria. That’s what I do.”

“And what if something happens to you? What will I do?”

“You’ll live, Aria. You’ll live.”

*

The radio tower almost looks the same as the last time my dad and I tried to send out a message—except someone broke a window. I walk in slowly, rifle up and ready to shoot, but I don’t see anything else amiss.

When I reach the upper level, though, I see the remnants of someone having taken up residence. There’s a sleeping bag, empty cans, a beaten-up backpack. I frown, circling around, wary—

My instincts kick in, and I turn just as someone swings a baseball bat at my head.

Then I’m pointing a rifle in the face of a blonde-haired girl who’s looking at me with terror in her eyes.

“Oh, thank God, you’re not a zombie,” she says in a rushed voice, but she’s still holding up the bat defensively. Even though she looks otherwise harmless, I don’t lower the rifle.

“Are you alone?” My voice nearly cracks, so unused to talking now.

She nods quickly. “Yes, yes, I am! Now, can you please put down the gun?”

“I’ll put it down when you put down the bat.”

I can tell she wants to argue with me, but then she sets the bat down on the floor before lifting her hands up in surrender. I nearly laugh because she looks so scared. I’d hate to see how she’d react to an actual zombie attack.

“Okay,” I say, at least feeling safe enough to drop my defenses and point the rifle towards the ground. “Are you the one broadcasting the music?”

The girl looks confused for a moment. “I mean, I messed around with the dials and buttons a bit, but I didn’t think anything was working.”

Now I want to laugh at myself. I risked myself by leaving the bunker, and it was all just from some dumb blonde girl’s mistake? Would wonders never cease?

“Are you okay?” the girl asks.

“Yes,” I answer with a snap. “Why?”

“You’re—you’re crying.”

I don’t know if it’s still the shock from killing Mort or the idea that my dad really is gone—but she’s right. I touch my cheek and feel the wetness betraying me.

And then I want to laugh hysterically. I’m so tired. I just want some peace.

“Sorry,” I say, wiping my cheeks with my free hand. “It’s been a bad day.”

“Tell me about it. It’s a bad life right now.”

I actually chuckle at that. “What’s your name?”

“June.”

“Okay, June. I’m Aria.” I actually sit down on the floor. “Want to tell me your story?”

Because heaven knows we each have our own stories about what the zombie apocalypse did to us.