Free Save Me by L J Baker Page B

nowadays.
    I made my way to the bathroom to clean up and change into some fresh clothes. I was wearing one of Will's t-shirts somehow, but I couldn't remember changing. The last couple days had been a blur. Hanging on a clothesline across the shower, I found Will's black t-shirt with the pink pony and slipped it on with some clean yoga pants. I was no longer feeling nauseated so I decided to get something small to eat and take some more pain medication. I wanted to take something stronger and be done with this headache for awhile but I knew Will wouldn't be happy about that so I stuck with the stuff he had given me earlier.
    The photo album Will had found was sitting out on the coffee table in the living room. I hadn't seen it since I was little. So many happy memories forever saved within the pages. I used to take it down from the bookshelf upstairs and hide it in my room so I could look at it with a flashlight at bedtime. Mom always knew what I was doing but she pretended not to know. She was like that though. She could always tell when you were lying or keeping something from her but she never let on. She would go along, pretending she wasn't wise to your secret. I didn't have words to describe how much I missed Mom. After what I'd been through with Bo and Lucas, I just wanted to feel her arms around me, to feel safe.
    Although the basement was filled with books and other remnants of my mother, I wanted something more personal that I could keep with me. When we gathered our belongings to bring down to the basement we all knew that whatever we left may not be there when we were finally able to return. Mom didn't bother with her jewelry or other things around the house. She focused on practical items and photographs. I knew she had some jewelry in the safe upstairs which she figured would be safe I guess. I decided to go and have a look.

~Chapter Seven~
     
     
     
    I took a quick peek in on Will. He was still asleep, his face buried in the pillow. He must have been so exhausted. He looked like he would sleep the whole day. I quietly closed the bedroom door and made my way upstairs. The house was in pretty good shape considering no one had actually lived up here in almost two years. Many of the houses I had been in since the outbreak were not nearly as lucky. People picked over them and took anything they could use. Hell, even I had taken my share of items from abandoned homes. These days you had to take what you could to survive. Anyone who left their home had to know that it was a good possibility if they actually returned, it wouldn't be how they left it. I could tell some stuff was missing and some furniture was overturned, but nothing that really mattered. I couldn't blame anyone for trying to survive. Personally, I tried to take only what I needed to live. I've met people who take all kinds of stuff they certainly don't need. One guy had a collection of cell phones. I mean, what do you need that for? I guess he was optimistic that the outbreak would be temporary and when everything went back to normal, he would sell them or something. In the early days, we tried to believe that the scientists would figure this all out and eventually we could go back to our old lives. We would huddle around the radio and listen to the news reports. At first, they ran 24 hours a day. After awhile though, they became more and more sporadic. Eventually, the radio stopped all together. I came across an old man not that long ago, Benny, I think his name was, who still listened to his hand-crank emergency radio. He insisted that sooner or later the military would start broadcasting and let us know they had found a cure.
    We did get some information from those news reports in the early days. Of course, it didn't take a radio broadcast to get the idea of what was happening. We were living through an actual zombie apocalypse. It still seems funny when I hear myself say that out loud. Zombie apocalypse. It just seems comical. The scientists on