Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse by Michelle Kilmer Page A

exhaustion, but also to keep from seeing the woman as she was dying and that caused the beam of light to move to an area on the side of her head near her right ear. At some point the woman stopped breathing and her face lost its last spots of color, but still Ripley tried to dislodge the bread.
    Ian put a hand to Ripley’s shoulder. “She’s gone. It won’t help. We need to get out of here,” he warned her, but she was in a daze. Her mother’s eyes were empty, but open. Ian knew it was time to go when he saw them move once again.
    “Ripley!” Ian said forcefully. At that moment, as her name crossed his lips, her mother’s mouth closed on the fingers that were still inside of it. Ripley screamed and yanked until her hand was released. She stared down at the bleeding stumps of three missing fingers.
    • • •
    “I should have pulled her hand out.”
    At least you used your voice that time. You couldn’t do as much for Grant.
    “I could have saved her and let her mother die! And she could have come to live with us and then maybe I never would have let Lena in! Maybe we would have found a better house!”
    Watch your volume. You’ll alert the beasties.
    “She fucking thought she was going to be fine!”
    • • •
    “It’s okay. I just n-n-n-need to sto-p-p-p-p the bleeding,” Ripley stuttered, still unable to take her eyes off of the space where her fingers used to be.
    Ian backed away. “You know that won’t help.” He moved away slowly because he didn’t want to seem like a complete jerk. The wound, though technically non-fatal if treated quickly, would kill her. If the blood loss didn’t end her life, her infected mother’s saliva would. It was toxic and already mixing with her blood, traveling through her veins. She would die.
    She would come back.
    Ripley was in shock and Ian used that to his advantage. He knew he had overstayed his welcome. He closed the shipping container’s door and locked her inside as she had her mother. But he couldn’t yet leave. Her screams from inside where attracting a new group of zombies to the foot of the container tower.
    “Ian! Please open the door! ”
    “You know why I can’t, Ripley! I’m sorry!” He yelled back through the metal door. “I’m sorry.” He listened to her pound on it. Each thwack sent daggers through his heart. Each tearful cry, growing quieter as she weakened, burned his ears.
    “My mom. She’s getting-” Her final words.
    Ian heard a soft thud as Ripley’s body hit the floor. Blood was seeping out from under the door; too much blood. Her death had come.
    He waited for a while longer in the new silence. The dead below began to disperse. Before he climbed down, he heard two sets of dragging feet carrying lifeless bodies around the small and cluttered interior of the shipping container.
    • • •
    She stayed with her mother in death as she had in life.
    “I had a chance to free her.”
    There was no way to know what would become of them.
    • • •
    Tears fell from Ian’s eyes as he walked back to the bungalow. He walked slowly and carelessly, unconcerned if he lived or died. Ian’s reflection in the mirror had changed. He was more mature and defeated at the same time. Grant was still sleeping.
    • • •
    And Grant never knew.
    “No, he didn’t even know that I snuck out that night.”
    But you wanted to tell him.
    “I wanted to brag, but I couldn’t think of Ripley without seeing blood.”
    You still can’t.
    “Will I ever?”
    Grant didn’t let you brag much. He knew you were a wimp. Tell them about the guns. Maybe if you had had one, you could have saved her.

 
     
     
     
    …I WASN’T TRIGGER HAPPY
    It was one thing to shoot guns in video games and have discussions with your best friend about recoil and stopping power, it was a completely different thing to hold a gun in your hand and take a life. Ian had been purposely avoiding it and, through luck alone, a usable weapon hadn’t presented itself.
    Now, with