Free Shelf Life by S.L. Dearing Page A

noticed the butterflies swirling in her belly. The nervous energy catching her for a moment, but she took a step forward and breathed deeply. She grabbed up the backpack and started to close the top, then stopped.
    “What do you think, Max? What if there’s bad stuff going on out there? We might need something to defend ourselves. And what if we can’t get back here once we leave?”
    She frowned, looked around the hole and saw the box of matches she had prepared with a paraffin coating to protect them from wetness. She grabbed them and tossed them in the backpack. The radio? No, the batteries had died and it was just one more thing to carry. What could she use as a weapon? She glanced around the room again. A screwdriver? A knife? Then she saw a box near her cot. The items she had been meaning to use to make the hole in the ground homier. She moved to the box and began to pull out items, a couple vases, a few pictures, some books, and at the bottom, a shelf with two L brackets. She laughed. L brackets, the best weapons in hand-to-hand combat with a zombie. She smiled as she remembered a dream she’d once had, where she was left with no other alternative then to use L Brackets against the walking dead and, to her delight, they had worked beautifully.
    “Probably no zombies out there, but these could be beneficial, right?”
    Max barked once in approval and wagged his tail. She stood up and looked at her desk. There was a roll of duct tape. She began to wrap the duct tape around the middle of the bracket until it felt soft in her hand and she could get a tight grip around it. Then repeated the process with the second bracket and then placed them securely in her backpack. Shannon removed the remainder of the dried ration of rice cake and took a last bite before tossing the rest to Max. She was about to shoulder the backpack when she looked back over at the box.
    She knelt beside the box again and pulled up three picture frames. They were small and silver, each containing a photo, children laughing, a couple kissing, and a group of people at a park. She smiled as she looked at the pictures, then she slid them into her backpack and zipped it up. She turned back to Max, who had been watching her.
    “Ok, Buddy, let’s do this?”
    Shannon slipped her arms into the straps of the pack and secured it comfortably on her shoulders, and then she took a deep breath, walked to the door and slid the bolt back with a loud clang. She pulled the door towards her and blinked as she covered her eyes; the sunlight filled the stairs that led to the surface. Slowly her eyes became accustomed to the brightness before her and she stepped out onto the stairs. The soles of her boots thudded against the stone steps as she ascended higher and higher, the light increasing with each step. She covered her already squinted eyes a little more.
    “Why is it so bright?”
    When she reached the top of the stairs, she blinked again and looked around. Her house was gone, nothing but a foundation remained. She stepped forward and stifled a groan. Everything was gone. Memories gone, food gone, transportation gone, clothes gone...everything was gone. Tears ran down her face as her heart twisted in her chest. It wasn’t the house or the things that had been destroyed that caused her grief, she knew that. It was what she could see. The entire neighborhood was gone. The silence was deafening. There were no birds in the sky, no trees, only broken trunks and scattered rubble and cars. Everything and everyone was gone.
    Shannon looked out into the distance and wiped her eyes, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly, trying to regain control. She looked behind her to see Max making his way next to her, also squinting and blinking his eyes.
    “I didn’t think it’d be this bad.”
    He pressed his head into her hand and she felt the warm softness of his fur on her fingertips as she instinctively scratched behind his ear. That familiar warmth, he was all she had left.