Apocalypse In a Castle

“Vasquez.” I felt someone nudging my foot. Pulling my wool blanket tighter around myself, I turned my face into my pillow, trying to hold onto sleep.

“Vasquez. Get up.” I stayed silent and still, not wanting to be pulled further from sleep, and hoping that whoever was bothering me would just go away if I didn’t move. It seemed to be working, and I sighed, contentedly. Right as I felt myself beginning to fall into a deeper sleep, someone whispered in my ear, “Vasquez, I found some Takis in one of the old guest rooms.” My eyes shot open instantly, but I didn’t move. Sean could just be fucking with me and I didn’t want to get excited over nothing.

“Which flavor?” I asked, my voice muffled from the pillow and blanket. There was a long pause, I’m assuming for dramatic effect, before I felt him lean back over to my ear and whisper, “Fuego.” I whipped my blanket off my body and sat upright, coming face to face with Sean, who was smirking at me.

“Martinez, if this is some sort of sick joke I will shoot you dead, I am not even kidding,” I said, squinting at the light coming from the hallway through the half-opened door.

“Damn, girl, that morning breath is ripe,” he said while leaning back from me and pulling his shirt up over his nose. Temporarily distracted from the potential Takis find, I glanced over at my phone charging on my nightstand table. 3:44 am. We had to be on watch duty in 15 minutes. I swiped to cancel my 3:45 alarm as it popped up, then turned back to Sean.

“I need a beverage to go with my Takis.” He laughed as he stood up and offered me his hand, which I accepted as I used it to pull myself out of my warm, cozy bed.

“You are so weird, Vasquez.”

It had been just over a year since the apocalypse began. I’d been on a return flight home from Tokyo to LA when the pilot said we had to make an emergency landing in a little town in Texas called Burnet. LAX had already been hit by the first wave of zombies, but Burnet was supposed to be safe. We landed without incident, even got our bags and everything. After the crew had finished giving everyone their luggage, the pilot came over and told us all what was happening, then showed us a video from LAX. Like with most viruses, it seemed the zombies’ goal was to infect as many as possible. In the video, they did this by biting and spitting like llamas. Yum. People began to get a little panicked, but they were mostly keeping it together. Another plane had landed not far from ours, and that’s when I saw them standing on the other end of the tarmac. There were seven of them that had gotten off a small charter. They didn’t look like your typical decaying Hollywood zombie or anything like what I thought a zombie would look like. Hell, one of them was still holding her purse. The only thing that was different about their appearance was their eyes. The whites of their eyes had become red as if every single blood vessel inside of them had exploded and formed a bloody little ocean surrounding their irises, which remained unchanged. They stood there just staring at us for a minute. I slowly started to unpack my gun from its case when the bitch with the purse made what I can only describe as constipated pooping grunts, and then they all charged. They ran at us fast, but I loaded my gun faster. I moved to the front of the non-zombie crowd and shot each of the zombies in the forehead. That took care of that, and thus I became the Olympic sharpshooter turned zombie-slayer.

Luckily, Burnet was pretty isolated from things and everyone from the plane moved together as a group. Town locals were accommodating and I was able to load up on some more guns and ammunition, and we all got some food. Someone suggested we head to the local lake, which was when we saw Falkenstein Castle. We decided to check it out and surprisingly were welcomed in with open arms. I think my clout as zombie-slayer was definitely a positive for the owners, as they agreed to let us all stay in the castle. That first night we learned a lot about the zombies from videos and news sources that were still running. We figured we’d be pretty safe as long as outsiders stayed away. Overall, I was pretty grateful to the captain for choosing Burnet. In the past year we rarely had any zombies reach us, and staying in the castle was like staying in a fortress. We all helped reinforce the stone wall around the property and built a platform on the roof for the watch crews. I trained those who wanted to learn to shoot and taught them my zombie-slaying ways, and we all lived pretty happily at Falkenstein. It was our little post-zombie apocalypse fairytale!

I waited for Sean on the watch platform while cleaning and loading our rifles. Our watch was 4 am to 10 am, and then we were relieved by Ruth and Jean, my two best shooters after Sean. I waited impatiently for Sean, the promised Takis, and some lemonade he said he would get from the kitchen as I stood up and scanned the marigold fields outside the wall with my night vision scope. Ellen, the owner of the local grocery shop in Burnet, told Jim, a botanist from Minnesota, that she had a ton of marigold seeds, which apparently grew very well here. So Jim decided to spend an entire week planting and cultivating his vision of a giant marigold field. A year later, the marigolds stretched almost a half-mile in every direction. It really was beautiful and I complimented Jim on it often. Finding the drive to create beauty during a zombie apocalypse was pretty freakin’ awesome! My stomach rumbled hungrily for Takis when I caught sight of movement in the marigolds through my scope. I panned back to the left, assuming I’d see the usual deer or other wild animal. I scanned the marigolds, looking for whatever it was when I saw more of them moving to the right. Foxes, I thought. Maybe even a snake. Burnet had lots of wild critters that liked to play in and eat the marigolds. I was just about to put my scope down when I saw a zombie running through the marigolds, faster than I’d ever seen one run before. I picked up my rifle, lined up my shot, and put a bullet through its forehead, then pressed the button we had installed on the platform that let everyone know a zombie was nearby and for reinforcements to go to all watch posts. I picked my scope back up and saw more of them running through the marigolds right toward the wall. Sean burst through the platform hatch, promised Takis in hand, and I grabbed his arm and helped pull him through, then handed his rifle to him.

“They’re all over.”

“What?” he asked, confused as he picked up his scope.

“Oh shit.”

Ruth, Jean, and five others came through the hatch, grabbed their rifles, and we all just shot what we could. The gunfire lasted for about fifteen minutes. There were a lot of zombies coming through, and a few that had tried to make it over the wall, which were taken care of by the watch crew that worked the wall. We’d never seen this many zombies in Burnet. Once the last zombie was dead and the marigold field was clear, I set my rifle down, opened the bag of Takis that were lying on the floor of the watch platform, and savored each crunch of Fuego.

“Where the hell did they all come from?” Sean asked as he came up beside me.

“You forgot my lemonade.”

“What?”

“My lemonade. You know I can’t eat without a drink first.” Sean laughed.

“You are so weird, Vasquez. And I hate to break it to you but you’re eating those Takis right now… without having a drink first.”

“Debra from the pawnshop said she was trying to get her niece to come to Burnet.”

“When was that?”

“A couple of weeks ago. I went to get another rifle from her and she mentioned it briefly, but she seemed noncommittal.”

“Do you think she brought them here?”

“I don’t know. But I think Burnet is going to look very different in the morning,” I said, eating the last of my Takis.

“Let’s double watches tonight, and we’ll go out tomorrow morning and see what’s happening. I need more ammo, anyways. Can you get everyone all organized and stuff?” Sean laughed again.

“Sure, I can get everyone organized, ‘and stuff’,” he finger quoted at me.

“You know I’m not good with that shit. That’s what you’re for.”

“Ah, yes, the zombie-slayer is the leader of the pack but really wants to be the lone wolf because she’s a disorganized mess and only really good for training and zombie-slaying.” I gave Sean a look and rolled my eyes at him, to which he smirked at me.

“How did you even get into sharpshooting anyways?” I realized this was the first time anyone had asked me this question since we’d landed in Burnet.

“I actually hate shooting and guns. I never liked them, but my grandfather did. He used to take me to the range, and that was our bonding time together. Then when we realized I was good at shooting, I started competing. My grandfather died six months before the Olympics. I do this for him and because it reminds me of our time together. But if it weren’t for that, and zombies, I’d never touch a gun again in my life,” I said, looking over at Sean. He was watching me intently as I spoke. I looked away and moved back to the railing, tossing my empty Takis bag into a small trash can. I stared out into the darkness and sighed. What a morning. I hoped Burnet wouldn’t be in too bad of shape in the daylight. This was the reality of the zombie apocalypse, though, and so far we had been lucky. It was only a matter of time before the fairy tale evaporated and reality came crashing down on us. At least we had Falkenstein and each other, because it would be near impossible to survive this apocalypse alone. I was grateful for what I had in what was left of the world. And also for Takis!