Day 16. Late Morning.
The city wasn't the same.
Not that it had been normal before. But now, even the air felt like it had changed its mind.
"Does the air smell more… broccoli?" Ellie asked, nose wrinkled.
Carl sniffed. "That's rot and wildflowers. Zombie potpourri."
The four of them were making their way along an unfamiliar road that technically should've led back to their stronghold. The map was long gone—Toby's "trade deal of the century" for a sticker that just said "Certified Gremlin."
But they weren't really lost. Just… zigzagging.
"Like emotionally compromised ants," Ellie had said.
---
Their wagon creaked, bouncing gently with each uneven step. Inside were all the usual supplies: snacks, water bottles, two mystery items labeled "DO NOT OPEN – Nana," and Toby himself, arms outstretched like a budget Jesus as he balanced on a stack of boxed pudding cups.
"I see a tree shaped like a zombie duck!" he shouted.
"That's just a bush," Carl said.
"...That's what the ducks want you to think."
---
Around a corner, a moan.
Low. Wet. Like someone gargling sadness.
Carl raised his crowbar.
One zombie staggered out from between two garbage bins. It wore what used to be a mail carrier's uniform, still gripping a soggy envelope in one hand.
It moved slowly, twitchy, uncoordinated.
Nana didn't stop walking.
She stepped forward calmly, cane swinging. Crack. The zombie dropped like a puppet cut from its strings.
"He didn't even get to deliver his letter," Ellie whispered.
"Maybe it was bills," Carl muttered.
---
They walked on.
Past a basketball court half-swallowed by ivy.
Past a row of laundry still hanging between two poles, stiff with dust and time.
At one point, they passed a cat sitting on top of a broken-down car. The cat meowed, then casually pushed a zombie hand off the hood like it was knocking over a mug.
"Respect," said Ellie.
"Meowfia," Toby whispered.
---
Not all zombies came charging.
Some were just there.
One was stuck waist-deep in a manhole, growling at a shopping cart.
Another was pressed face-first against a chain-link fence, drooling into the wind.
A third was curled up in a lawn chair like it had just given up halfway through being scary.
Carl still kept his guard up, but the group didn't rush anymore. They walked around most threats, barely even flinching.
"We're desensitized," Ellie said.
"We're adaptable," Carl corrected.
"We're built different," Toby yelled.
---
Midway through a block with cracked sidewalks and spray-painted vines, they found an old billboard turned memorial. Faces had been drawn in charcoal and marker. Underneath, written in large, smudged letters:
"WE FOUGHT. WE FED. WE FOUND EACH OTHER."
Toby blinked at it. "It's like a zombie yearbook."
Carl said nothing. But his fingers brushed the edge of the wagon like he was grounding himself.
Nana didn't stop walking. But her next steps were slower.
---
They crossed through a cul-de-sac that looked half-frozen in time.
A tricycle lay tipped over in the grass.
Windchimes tinkled from a porch. A radio still buzzed faintly in an upstairs window—static, but somehow rhythmic.
And in the center of the roundabout: a zombie, impaled cleanly on a "No Parking" sign. It twitched once, like a bad reflex, then fell still.
Toby saluted it.
""You tried your best."
Ellie added: "You parked illegally."
---
It wasn't just the zombies that changed.
Nature was reclaiming everything.
Streetlights were covered in moss. Vines coiled around lamp posts like snakes on a mission. Birds that shouldn't live here were suddenly everywhere. A peacock walked by once. Nobody commented.
"I think that bird tried to flirt with me," Ellie muttered.
Carl: "Please don't encourage it."
---
At a gas station with a broken slushy machine, they took a break.
Carl checked their remaining supplies. Water was fine. Jerky was low. Nana had somehow gained four extra cans labeled only "MEAT?"
Toby chased a butterfly until he fell into a patch of dandelions and declared it his "emergency nap zone."
Ellie found a half-full box of colored pencils.
She drew a comic on the wall next to the ice machine: a family of survivors riding a shopping cart into the sunset. Above it, she wrote:
"STILL GOING."
---
Another zombie showed up.
This one sprinted—fast, twitchy, foaming.
It came out of nowhere, shrieking, arms flailing.
Carl moved fast.
So did Nana.
So did Ellie.
Together, they took it down—one crowbar swing, one shove with a wagon, one perfectly-aimed juice box to the face that momentarily blinded it.
After it stopped twitching, the group stood in silence for a few seconds.
Then Toby said, "That juice box was my favorite flavor."
"I sacrificed it for the greater good," Ellie said solemnly.
"Berry Justice," Carl added.
---
They kept walking.
The world was quieter now.
Less of an ending. More of a long, strange lullaby that kept playing even when no one was listening.
They passed a dead tree full of shoes.
A bus stop turned vegetable garden.
An alley where someone had built a swing out of wires and bones (they didn't stay long).
Then, finally, they saw it.
Their street.
Or… what was left of it.
---
It was still standing.
Mostly.
The mailbox was gone. The lawn had exploded into knee-high chaos. But the front gate, bent and spray-painted with "NO SOLICITORS OR ZOMBIES," still stood.
Carl let out a breath.
"We made it."
Ellie looked around. "Everything's messier than I remember."
"So are we," Nana replied.
Toby faceplanted into the yard and sighed.
"Home is dirt."
---
They didn't unpack immediately.
They just stood there a while.
Let the wind blow.
Let the sun warm their faces.
Let the world whisper that it hadn't stopped spinning yet.
Then Nana broke the silence.
"Alright. Someone find the broom. I'm not getting eaten just because we got sentimental."
---
Day 16. Afternoon.
The fence creaked open with a reluctant groan.
Carl gave it a shove. It gave a half-hearted protest, like even the wood had grown tired of holding the line against the end of the world.
They were back.
Their suburban stronghold looked mostly intact—still crooked, still full of vines and old furniture barricades—but intact.
Sort of.
The first thing they saw wasn't the porch.
It was the chickens.
---
Three of them.
One perched on the mailbox. One standing on a busted lawn chair. The last in the middle of the front yard like it was challenging gravity, logic, and Carl's sense of peace.
"Are… those our chickens?" Ellie asked.
"They've evolved," Nana muttered, squinting. "That one's wearing feathers like a cape."
Toby gasped. "The prophecy chicken."
The middle chicken clucked once, then pecked a zombie hand that had blown in from somewhere. It didn't even hesitate.
"That's murder," Carl said flatly.
"That's our chicken," Ellie corrected.
---
The wagon rolled over the cracked path leading to the house.
Grass was taller. Some vines had started to reach the windows. But the door was still there—Nana's reinforced "do not enter unless you're human and/or emotionally stable" sign still hanging proudly.
As they passed the gate, something rustled in the tree overhead.
A pause.
All four looked up in unison.
It was there.
The squirrel.
Still watching.
Still judging.
Still unmoved.
---
"How is it still alive?" Carl whispered.
"He feeds on secrets and sarcasm," Ellie replied solemnly.
"He's planning something," Toby added. "He knows too much."
The squirrel blinked, unamused.
Then flicked its tail.
Then disappeared into the foliage like an ancient monk fading into legend.
---
Inside the house, not much had changed.
A few chairs had toppled. The pantry door hung slightly open (Nana grunted and muttered something about "ghost rats"). But their makeshift home was still standing.
Still holding memories in every corner.
Ellie dropped her bag at the base of the stairs and flopped onto the couch.
"I'm gonna nap for six hours."
"That's not a nap," Carl said.
"It is if I refuse to acknowledge time."
---
Toby ran to the kitchen, only to find one of the chickens already there, perched on the sink.
It stared him down.
He stared back.
"This is my domain," Toby whispered.
The chicken didn't blink.
He slowly backed away and re-declared the hallway as his new home base.
---
Nana swept the floor with a bored expression, muttering about "biker dust" and "goat fur." Carl did a half-hearted security check, then poured a can of beans into a pan and called it dinner.
It wasn't fancy.
It wasn't dramatic.
But it was quiet.
Peaceful.
A rare post-apocalyptic moment that didn't demand anything except a deep breath and the sound of home.
---
As evening settled, the four of them sat on the back porch.
Watching the sky go orange.
Watching a few stray zombies stagger past the fences.
Watching the squirrel reappear and sit on the power line like it owned the neighborhood.
The chickens clucked quietly near the bushes, forming some kind of strategic triangle.
"They're plotting," Ellie said.
"Should we stop them?" Carl asked.
"No," Nana replied. "Let them have their revolution. We'll join if it has dental."
---
Toby nodded off on Carl's shoulder, holding a toy lightsaber he had found inside a couch somewhere.
Ellie pulled out her notebook and started doodling the chicken army.
Nana put her feet up and muttered, "We'll fix the barricade tomorrow."
Carl took one more look at their mismatched furniture, their weird birds, their semi-haunted squirrel, and his deeply weird family.
"Yeah," he said softly. "We're home."
---
End of Chapter 19 – Wandering Home
> The apocalypse still existed. Zombies still wandered. But for now, inside the walls of their overgrown house with chickens and a squirrel watching, things were okay. That was enough.
---