PROLOGUE
Day 111.
It was Christmas Eve evening, December 24, 2023. Candlelight illuminated the room where the Kaczmarek family was staying, along with the trusted Veredi twosome. Next to Emil sat Marcel, the boys joked with each other and laughed, finishing more and more bottles of beer. It was certain that not even the apocalypse could affect their relationship. Kaja, watching them from the sidelines, saw her brother in a good mood for the first time in a very long time. Devoid of anger, hating the world and full of faith. She wasn’t entirely sure about their consumption of alcohol, but it was a good time to relax, at least for a while. Holding a mug of hot liquid in her hand, Kaja only smiled, taking a sip after a while. The aroma of cocoa spread through the schoolroom, arranged as a rest room. The benches had been dismantled and converted into barricades so there were very few inside. Blankets and sheets hung from the windows, obscuring them from the view of the corpses roaming in the distance. Although it was relatively safe on the school grounds, one still feared the night, especially since it was unusually cold for this time of year. No one expected them to spend Christmas in the frigid building of the abandoned school, as one of the few who survived the apocalypse. It wasn’t a great Christmas Eve, most people didn’t feel like socializing or were too tired. Someone else also had to keep guard next to each entrance to the building in case the group was in danger.
“Would you like a refill?” Tarhos asked, looking toward Kaja with a pitcher filled with drink.
The girl glanced at him, snapped out of her reverie. She nodded, which Veredi took as confirmation. He poured the young Kaczmarek a full cup of cocoa, which had been prepared on the field stove, and set the jug back in its place. They had plenty of food from their last trip for supplies a week ago so they did not spare themselves during the feast. The cooked canned food was not a culinary miracle, however it was enough to please the survivors, especially since it had been a long time since they had a hot meal in their mouths. The conversations dragged on for a long time. Time seemed to pass slowly. For the survivors, the mere few months of the apocalypse seemed to last a lifetime. It also affected their relationship, they were closer to each other than most people would be after a decade of friendship, which greatly pleased Kaja, who had always missed her friends.
“...And she left.” Emil continued uncomfortable topic. Kaja did not hear the whole thing because she was absorbed in melancholy thoughts surrounding her. She tried to keep up with the rest and listened.
“Do you have regrets?” Marcel asked.
Emil fell silent. At first a thought came to him to deny it, but he stammered. His facial expression clearly indicated that the past still hurt him, despite the passage of time.
“I.. I don’t know.” He felt an awkward sting in his stomach after this question. At any other time, he probably wouldn’t have answered or dropped the subject, but the alcohol effectively dissolved his tongue and allowed him to open up to others. “Maybe. But... it wouldn’t be right. You know... to keep her here by force.”
“You let a girl leave without a leg. I don’t know, man.” Marcel tilted the bottle, taking a few deeper sips of liquor.
Aurora glanced at Emil, hearing Marcel’s words. For reasons known only to her, she was intrigued by his reaction to mentioning Klara. She was a little jealous, but on the other hand she felt relieved that the girl was not with them. She saw grief in the boy’s eyes, but it wasn’t caused by Klara’s departure but by something else entirely. She squeezed her cup tightly, warming her hands and when she raised her head, her gaze met Kaja’s. The young Kaczmarek noticed how Aurora was swiping at Emil with her eyes and couldn’t stop smiling wickedly because of it. She didn’t say a word, but she knew about her friend’s secret, which she had kept hidden for a while.
Time passed. Suddenly, a few minutes after midnight, the survivors heard a deafening clatter. Dawid, sitting just inside the door with a knife in his hand, stood up alarmed. Emil, along with Tarhos, followed his footsteps and also made their way to the corridor. The only place where the sound could have come from was the front door of the boarding house. They weren’t convinced they should have checked the source of the noise, but they couldn’t let zombies wander the school grounds. In addition, it must have meant damage to the fence since it had managed to get through. Emil calmly approached the glass door and, taking a deep breath, pushed back the blanket obstructing the view outside. However, he saw not a corpse but two, young girls. Barely alive, they were seeking shelter and that’s how they ended up here, lured by the candlelight seen from the uncovered windows. Emil opened the door and knelt by the girls.
“You’re safe.”
On this Christmas Eve night, not one, but two wanderers found peace in a death-free zone.
