The Good Died Yesterday

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities,

against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against

spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. -Ephesians 6:12

Stale dust floated lazily on the afternoon air, kicked up by Sora's steady gait down the sun-bathed dirt path. Her legs ached; everything ached. She found herself remembering - always remembering.

She'd lived 22 years before everything had gone to shit and it was those 22 years that incessantly replayed over and over again through her mind as she trod the lonely road toward where she did not know.

The sun had gained a few degrees on it's angle of descent but it had been a long time since Sora had paid any mind to the time of day; so long since she'd had any kind of a schedule to keep. It couldn't have been that long, right? It seemed that in this new world a mere three weeks could feel

like an eternity. The thought made her chuckle. Three weeks since she'd escaped the city, at least.

The first several days had been such a blur, she wasn't sure exactly how long it had been between Day Zero and when she'd finally made it out.

She'd been a dual Journalism and Criminology major at Arizona State University. Her course and work schedules back then had kept her going non-stop. Now the only schedule she had to keep was whatever her body told her.

She didn't have to be in bed by a certain time and she woke when her body told her to wake - or when the screaming wouldn't allow her to sleep. She heard it now, off in the distance, echoing through the valley below. She checked the sling on the semi-auto AR-15 that hung across the front of her deep blue Kevlar vest.

The vest itself wrapped around a white tank top clad, sunburned torso. Checking that the sling's release was tight had become a kind of nervous tic of hers. She'd pulled the rifle, along with a couple hundred rounds of .223 and some other useful equipment, most of which rested peacefully in a desert sand colored pack on her back, out of a wrecked Phoenix police unit.

The officer himself had handcuffed one wrist to the steering wheel and used his other hand to put his Glock 22 to his head and pull the trigger. Images of his shredded neck flashed through her mind once more. Aside from that final shot, the one that had drawn her to the cruiser in the first place, she'd heard only the cries of the ravenous and decayed, her own breathing, and the sound of her worn boots on the weary earth below her.

Those eldritch sounds continued to make their way through the trees as she checked to make sure that same Glock 22 was still nestled in the back of the waistline of her forest green mid-thigh length shorts.

She'd never felt so insignificant in her life. She was lost in the mountains with no way of discovering where she was. The traveling was extremely slow, too. She was exhausted, and constantly going up and down mountains didn't help matters any at all. The Arizona Rockies, the beauty of which she could admire if nothing else, rose up on all sides like great monoliths dedicated to a bygone age.

She longed for that age; that which had been birthed, aged, died and gone before she'd even been born to experience a fraction of it. She sifted through her memories searching for any sign of a time where these mountains meant more to people than they did now. When men looked on in awe at what God had created for them to enjoy rather than ever seeking to outdo Him.

She ached for a time when the Earth was fixed at the center of the universe. When right was right and wrong was wrong. And they may have been incorrect to assume that the sun orbited the Earth but at least they had honor and real love and a willingness to see the truth and meaning and beauty in the universe itself instead of only in how it could be exploited.

And that same incomprehensible universe lifted away from her in all directions, stretching into eternity - or at least as close to eternity as she could understand it from her incomparably limited point of view. She looked to the azure sky above, now the very center of her own little universe. It

had been days since she'd seen another living soul and if it weren't for the ghostly, sinister screeching that rang through the mountains without pause, she could believe that she was alone on the Earth - and believe it somewhat joyfully.

So, she trudged on, alone and afraid. Ever onward she would march until she found a place untouched by the death that had plagued her world. That was her only goal in life now - to find peace. She had no one to find, no one to search for her - she dared not hope her family was alive.

She was alone in the world and may well be the last alive anyway. She was fine with that. Numbness permeated her heart and body as she continued north. She'd long since made it into the domain of towering ponderosa pines and skittish elk and was hoping that she'd soon come across a river or stream. She needed a drink, and cleaning off the muck that had steadily caked in odd places on her body wouldn't hurt either. There would be no one to see, so she didn't have to worry about that.

Her mind continued to wander as the sun steadily settled further and further down into the horizon, like a child forever falling into its mother's arms. Sora missed her mother. She'd died when Sora was 8 years old and had left a hole in her heart that had since gone unfilled, constantly giving nothing but pain and doubt.

The only thing that had been able to temper those insidious feelings was the

strength and steadfastness of her father. He'd been crushed when his wife had died but being the powerful man he was, he didn't give up, he kept walking on - just as Sora did now. He'd been the soil from which she and her siblings would grow and become equal parts hard as steel and as lively as a verdant jungle.

If not for her father, she believed wholeheartedly that she wouldn't have survived this long. He was a masculine man - and stronger in form and spirit than any man she'd ever met besides. He'd led their family both before and after her mother's death with a certain vigor that she found lacking in most men as she grew. He'd set a standard of the type of man that she wanted to one day marry, and none measured up.

She'd always attributed it to the culture they'd been raised up in. It was accepted for men to be lazy, incompetent, addicted to video games, weed, porn, etc. Women had gained social control, not standing - control - by weakening and feminizing modern man. She was a woman, a strong, competent, beautiful woman - and it disgusted her that there were so few men that could stand on her level.

Her brothers had grown to be men much like her father, and she had looked forward to them marrying strong women in the future; to having new sisters. That would never happen now, though.

No, now all there would be was loneliness. At least she could talk to God, and maybe, just maybe, her family would see her surviving from behind the pearly gates and be proud. While some infinitesimally small flame of hope still burned within her that any of her family might still be alive somewhere out there, she tried not to give it too much thought. The more she thought about them and the likely reality that they were no longer completely alive the more pain she felt, and she was at her limit. She'd already talked herself out of turning her Glock against herself more than

once, somehow convincing herself that if she could just keep moving forward she'd eventually find peace, escape the screeching monsters of her past, both literally and figuratively, and scrape some sort of worthy existence out of what was left of the once promising future she'd had before

the apocalypse showed up on her doorstep.

She'd made it out of the city by being fast and silent and unrelenting in her single-minded goal of escape. She'd killed more than one of the monsters, but only the ones that she couldn't escape from. Not because she felt some sadness at the act, but because it was pointless to kill them if she

could get away. All it would take was one missed chance to keep moving to be surrounded by the undead things.

No, she'd kept moving, giving over to her instincts. She stopped and turned around, looking back the way she'd come. That action felt strange to her, as if in conflict with the very thoughts she was just thinking. She wasn't sure why she had stopped. The landscape appeared just as it had as she passed it. Dusty trails and huge pines and tall peaks and fresh air, that's what she was seeing and breathing in.

Sudden movement at the far end of the valley below caught her eye. She slipped her backpack off and hurriedly unzipped the zipper to pull out a pair of binoculars she'd grabbed from her dorm room before leaving. Her plan from the start was to find weapons and food and water and to escape into the mountains, so she knew the binoculars would be indispensable on this journey. She brought the eye pieces and peered through the binocular barrels to the source of the movement.

Her heart sank.

It seemed the wailing wasn't coming from just anywhere; it was coming for her. A horde of zombies was making its way steadily northward through the valley. They weren't moving fast but apparently they'd been traveling quicker than her if they'd come within sight. Dread filled her as she put the binoculars back in her pack and pulled the straps back over her shoulders. She reached down and

grabbed the grip of the rifle, pulling back the charging arm just enough to make sure there was a round in the chamber.

Assured the weapon was hot, she flicked the safety off. She'd never been the best at gauging long distances, but she imagined that these Zs were still much too far to be able to fire at effectively. With practiced motions she flipped down the sight covers on the front and rear and turned the

knob on the sight until a single red dot appeared in the middle of her view as she looked through it.

The red dot sight wasn't made for long distance shooting, so it didn't magnify her targets at all. That was fine, though. If they were far enough away that she didn't think she'd be able to drop

them with her rifle, then that meant she had time to come up with a plan.

It seemed to her that her only options were to continue north, turn west or hide where she was. Heading further north meant the horde would likely catch up with her at some point, considering they'd been moving faster than her up to this point, so that probably wasn't the best idea.

She could turn west, but there hadn't been an easy path in that direction for quite some time and she wasn't sure how much further north she'd have to go before finding one. She could climb up and over the peak that rose to her right as she looked southward, which would take her west anyway, but that would take far too long, considering the pitch of the thing. No, her best option, she thought, would be to hide.

She'd seen again and again that there was nothing special about the less-than-human monsters. If she stayed well-hidden it was most likely that they wouldn't even know she was there. She hoped. At least she knew they wouldn't be able to climb up to get her.

She'd never seen a zombie climb anything before, not that she would make the mistake of assuming they couldn't, but she felt pretty certain they wouldn't successfully be able to scale the several-hundred-foot sheer cliff face that dropped off in front of her to the valley far below. However, she knew very well the things didn't let go of a hunt once they knew prey was near. If she stayed out in the open, high up on a cliff or not, the Zs might spot her.

She didn't need that kind of attention. She lowered her rifle back to its hanging position, turned the red dot off and replaced the sight covers. She looked around, feeling a lump in her throat. Fear was one among many emotions that had been constantly plaguing her since that day, but she'd been mildly successful at suppressing it since escaping the city. Now that same fear was clawing its way back up with an apparently fervent desire to make her freeze in place to wait for that rotting,

approaching death to take her into its violent and bloodthirsty arms.

She couldn't give in. She never had before and now would be literally the worst time to start. There

didn't appear to be any caves that she could reach. Fortunately, though, there was a tree line. She'd have to do her best to get up one of the mountain pines as quickly as she could. She'd been sleeping in trees every night since reaching the forest. The foliage would protect her from view

and if the worst should happen then she felt more comfortable out of reach of the arms of the Zs than she did on the ground.

Sora wasted no more time in thought, instead opting for the safer route of finding a tree to climb. Luckily for her she'd found a length of wound up rope and a small tarp, from which she'd made a hammock of sorts in the trees every evening, in the police unit from which she'd gotten her

weapons. She couldn't trust herself to the ground.

She walked a short distance into the tree line opposite the sheer drop, up the steep incline, and picked a pine which was tall enough that all the branches were well out of her reach - and therefore out of the reach of the Zs should they reach her altitude. Given the incline of the ground she knew that the heights of this tree would be above the top of the trees between it and the valley, allowing for a good view below.

She unwound the rope and with practiced motion tied a knot in one end and tied a loop in the other. She then whirled the knotted end a few times in a wide circle and tossed it up. It found its way up and over the lowest branch and the end she tossed came sailing back toward her - stopping just out of reach. She cursed under her breath.

Out of other ideas she grabbed the end still on the ground and flicked it, hoping to give more slack to the other side of the rope. It worked, to her momentary jubilation, and she grabbed the knot and laced it through the loop on the other

end.

She stepped back and pulled the rope, causing the loop to snap up and to the branch above. It was then that she was more thankful than she'd ever been before for all the hours spent in the gym every week.

She was beaten and tired, and if not for the physical discipline of consistently working out then this constant climbing would have likely knocked her out of this survival game weeks ago. She took off her pack and rifle and pushed the ground end of the rope through the sling on the rifle and the straps on the pack and tied it off. After that there was nothing left to do but climb.

Hand over hand she began to pull herself up the rope. She guessed it was around fifteen feet from ground to branch, and her hands soon began to scream at her for every inch she gained in height. The vest she wore, sized for a man, made it more difficult to climb, but she felt much safer with

the bulky thing wrapped around her.

Soon enough she found herself heaving, butt planted firmly on the thick branch. She noticed sap on her hands then. She wasn't sure where it had come from on the tree but was annoyed regardless.

The incessant screaming of the ravenous dead in the valley had been slowly growing louder, closer. She did her best to get in a position with the best leverage so she could pull up her equipment. The rifle and pack together were heavy, though not as heavy as her 125-pound self. It took her longer than she would have liked to haul it up to her level.

She swiftly untied the pack and rifle and carefully re-situated them on her body. The branches weren't so close that they would prevent her from climbing up with her equipment on. She deftly made her way up as high as she dared despite her aching muscles, just enough to see the valley floor.

She swiftly removed the bag and rifle once more, tied them to a nearby branch, pulled out her binoculars, and watched. The movies had gotten a lot wrong, but in that moment she couldn't think of anything else she'd ever seen that could be a closer approximation to what she was witnessing now. It was a torrent of rabid corpses flowing through the valley like a river in slow motion after the

collapse of a dam. Her heart raced as the demonic creatures came closer. She wondered what could possibly be driving these monsters north in such a large pack.

She'd never seen them travel this way and it was extremely disconcerting to her to be seeing it now. What could organize them? Were they actually organized by some external entity? Were they being called to the north by... by some thing? Her breath came rapidly, heart threatening to beat out of her chest as the image of thousands of Zs etched itself into her mind.

The sight was bad, but the sounds were worse. A cacophony of dread, an orchestra of the damned, played soullessly, echoing back and forth from mountain side to mountain side, growing and building upon itself until it hit a crescendo of terror - horror - that shook Sora to the very

star dust from which she was forged.

She'd never forget this for as long as she lived - nor the rampant panic that was coursing through her veins like a fatal venom. Just then a quote came to her mind, and though she couldn't recall when or where she had first heard it - or indeed who actually said or wrote it originally - there

were no more fitting words to be said in that moment:

"Tomorrow is nothing; today is too late; the good lived yesterday."

She thought it must have been one of the ancients - a Greek or a Roman. Her entire body grew taut with fear as she began to hyperventilate. She gripped a branch with her hand as hard as she could, fearing that if she let up for even a second that she would fall, fall, fall into the hell that wormed between the mountains below.

"Tomorrow is nothing; today is too late; the good lived yesterday."

"...the good lived yesterday..."

"...today is too late..."

"...the good lived...yesterday..."

Sora stood motionless in the pine tree for what seemed an eternity. She didn't move until the monsters were long gone, nor until the wailing stopped. For hours she stayed frozen, in a panic induced stupor unlike anything she'd ever experienced.

She felt as if the very denizens of hell itself had clawed their disgusting way up from the pit to destroy her and everything she loved. They'd succeeded so far, she thought, and it wouldn't be long before she joined the rest of humanity in unwillingly partaking of this utter destruction of their souls. Today was too late... the good was already dead.