"We're... we're from the States," Kimmy stuttered shyly, trying to make conversation. After our first encounter, Rebekka and I began looking through the place she and her boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, Mark had holed up, trying to find anything useful. They had chosen a small bakery and icecream parlour as their hideout and had moved pretty much all of the furniture outside to create a barricade around the doors and windows of the place, so the room that might once have been a small café was empty, except for some litter, two sleeping bags, two backpacks and a few piles of clothes and bags.
Instead of an answer I just mumbled: "Mhm," while Bekah walked slowly across the room, glancing suspiciously from the two tourists to the shop interior and back again. Kimmy was still naked, her hair frizzy from getting showered in our pee and she stood in the doorway uneasily, not sure what to make of the situation. Mark was outside, acting disinterested in what was going on. "We... we went on a hiking tour across Europe," Kimmy continued, "and when we came across those mountains..."
I sighed. "When you came across the Alps you made a stop in Meran, which is the fist sign of civilization after the Brenner pass," I continued. "Like everyone else. And I guess that's when the whole world turned to shit, and you couldn't go on any more."
Kimmy swallowed hard. "We... I shouldn't even be here. If I had stayed at home in Boston, I wouldn't be in this mess." She was close to crying, and shivering from the cold.
"And what makes you think, this mess didn't happen in Boston as well?" I asked. "As far as we know it's everywhere."
I remembered how it all began. I was at work, driving through town to get to some family that had problems when I heard on the radio the prime minister had issued a state of emergency and everyone was supposed to stay at home and wait for when it was safe enough to come out again. I tried to call my boss, but nobody at city hall answered the phones anymore, and so I just went back home.
On the TV, there were almost constant news about a "nation-wide pandemic" that was highly contagious, but they wouldn't - or couldn't - tell us what it was. Whatever live camera feeds they had were just shaky and showed people rioting in the streets in an apparent mass-panic. On the internet, speculations were abundant, from a military take-over, to an alien invasion, to the zombie apocalypse. Turned out, the zombie apocalypse one was correct.
A few hours later, the power went down. I still had a battery-driven radio in my kitchen that I could tune in to a few stations who all continued to broadcast the stay-at-home warnings and beyond that not much of an update on what was really going on. By evening, I heard riots in the streets below my apartment and during the night, the constant noise from the apartments next to mine and from outside the windows kept me up, until I nervously packed a few things and snuck out the back, trying to get to a quieter part of town, away from what seemed to be an angry mob.
I had ended up in a villa on the wealthier side of town, which seemed abandoned and, more importantly, had high, solid walls around it. I figured if the owners ever returned in all this craziness, then it meant that whatever was going on was over anyway, and at that point I'd just excuse myself and go back home. They never returned, though, and the riots turned out to be zombies, hunting whatever was not a zombie yet.
Kimmy stared at me wide-eyed. "But I have to get home," she said, almost pleading. "I need to find out what's going on with my family." I nodded. The place was picked clean, whatever food they might have had was long gone, and there were no weapons or any useful items to be found. "Dry up," I told her, throwing a dirty, but dry, rag towards her. "We'll have to move out."
"Hold up," a male voice from behind her interrupted. "What makes you think we'll do what you say?" I looked sideways at Kimmy, who dried her hair with the cloth and went through her items to find something to put on. "Well," I answered, "you can stay here and starve to death, or come with us and stand a chance."
"It's all in the numbers," Rebekka said. "Meran has maybe 40.000 citizens. Right now, I'd say about 39.998 of those are out there, hunting for us. If we move, we can hold up in a different place every night, and we would never have to sleep in the same bed twice. On top of that, right now all the supplies that would've lasted this town for about 1 day will last us, even if we divide it up, for about 10.000 days. At least the non-perishable ones." When he stared at her speechless, she just shrugged. "I'm a civil engineer. I'm used to thinking in numbers."
I grinned. "But what about all those... people, out there?" Kimmy asked with trembling voice.
"Fire and brimstone," I replied. "Against them at least we stand a chance. Starving here is not an option." I looked around once more. "Why did you hole up here in the first place?" I asked.
She shrugged. "We were just having some icecream when something came on the radio and people panicked out on the street. And since we didn't have a place to go, we just stuck around. Things got worse and the shop owners all left and closed down, so in the end we figured we'd stand a better chance in here, where there's food... was food... than to just walk out on the streets. Nobody would let us in, so we just... broke in."
I nodded. "Well," I said, "now we'll need to break out again."
I watched her as she squeezed her thin body into underwear, a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, both of which had seen better days. "Why do you wear that?" Rebekka asked her. "It's the end of civilization and nobody cares about fashion any more, and between you and me..." she smiled at me sideways, "...between all of us, I won't be sad if I never have to wear underwear or pants for the rest of my life."
Kimmy blushed and stammered: "I... I don't know... I guess I just feel... naked, without them."
I looked down at my own jogging pants and blouse, then over to Rebekka, who still just wore a short black skirt and her open red shirt that barely covered her ample bosom. "You know what?" I said to her. "You're right! New times require a new wardrobe, and I think we should acknowledge that."
Rebekka and me went outside and glanced across the barricades. Mark and Kimmy had pulled all chairs, tables, sofas, even some shelves out onto the sidewalk and somehow all of them, interlocked, created enough of a barrier to stop the Zombies from rushing in on them. We were right at the corner of Laubengasse, where lots of shops just waited to be plundered. Fortunately, it was too tight for cars to drive through, so we wouldn't even have to worry about roadblocks. Unfortunately, it was - or, I guess, still is - the busiest place of Meran, so there were impenetrable masses of Zombies as far as we could see.
"We can't go through the streets," I said to Bekah, "except to go back the way we came from, and even that is risky."
She thought for a moment, then replied: "I've worked at shops like this before. There's usually a connection between the shop and the rest of the building, or even to other shops. Our two American friends may not have looked the place over thoroughly enough."
