by Sands, Samie
This is anger, fear, struggle, survival every single day and it’s horrible.
The camp might be a glimpse of normality, but nothing lasts forever. The infected always win out. Either that or we, as humans, self-destruct in some way.
“It’ll be back to horse and cart then,” I laugh as I make a feeble joke. “Like the good ol’ days.”
“Except...there aren’t many animals left either.”
“Hmm, yeah that’s true. I guess we’ll have to find some way to reinvent the wheel...”
I don’t manage to finish the sentence because something sucks all the air out of my body. I don’t even know what it is at first, it’s one of those quietly shocking moments. Everything rushes at the speed of light around me and it takes a moment for my brain to catch up.
Spinning, tumbling, falling...
Ignorance is preferable because when the realization comes it isn’t a pleasant one. We’re flying through the air, twisting and turning as we go; our ragdoll bodies being tossed about as if we weigh nothing, no idea how or when we’re going to land...
Alex
Rhys doesn’t believe me, I know he doesn’t, which is why I’m doing most of this alone. He might think it’s crazy of me to sneak into restricted areas and to try and listen in to certain conversations, but I’m determined.
Once I’ve unearthed something to tell him, then I will.
“What ya doing?”
The soft, female voice makes me jump. Guilt runs all over my face, joining in with the hot flush probably shining a deep red across my cheeks...
“Oh, Rachael.” Humiliation thickens as I realize who it is. “I’m just...”
“Acting sketchy? Yeah, I can see that. Alan is it?”
“Alex.”
“Oh, of course.” She slaps her palm to her forehead. “Alex. So, what are you doing?”
I stuff my hands awkwardly into my pockets, racking my brains for a reason that doesn’t make me sound like a crazy paranoid person. But there isn’t one. Not one off the bat anyway.
“I’m just listening in to people, trying to learn more about this place.”
“You don’t trust it?” She narrows her eyes suspiciously. “Any reason?”
“I don’t know what I think yet, that’s what I’m trying to work out.”
“So, there isn’t anything to make you feel this way?”
“Just a...feeling.” I offer her a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know, I can’t explain it. I guess I’m just concerned. Maybe it’s because of the journey that we’ve been on so far over the last...I don’t know, year or so. I can’t just trust anything.”
Rachael shoots me her sweet coy smile which makes my insides flutter. I haven’t ever liked anyone as much as I do her, and I barely even know her. This has got to be the longest conversation we’ve ever had. That’s only because she approached me as well, I never would’ve worked up the courage.
The last thing I want to do is blow it now.
“Maybe I should just give it up and accept that we’re going to be okay here...”
“Or maybe I should join you.”
“What do you mean?” I demand.
“Well, I like this place, but I’m not too sure either. So, I could hunt with you.”
“You...you would do that?” I ask doubtfully.
If Rhys doesn’t trust me, it’s hard to believe that a virtual stranger would put so much faith in me willingly.
“Hey, we all need a purpose in this world, don’t we?”
“And eavesdropping is going to be yours?”
“If there’s something to find, then I’d love to find it. I do need something to live for.”
I get a chill, half wondering if she’s talking more about me than this mission at hand. I don’t want to read too much into it and end up disappointed, but there’s a certain intensity to her gaze that has to mean something.
Hey, I could use some hope, and she sure gives me that along with the butterflies. Maybe it’s crazy to want love in this world, but I can’t resist the pull.
“Okay, so let’s eavesdrop then, try to find out if there’s something we need to worry about.”
I hold out my hand and she shakes it.
“Yep, let’s save the world!”
Oliver
“What the...?”
My voice box aches as I try to push myself up, but I’m stuck, frozen in place. My brain throbs as I try to recall what’s happening here. Why is my face sticky? And why the hell can’t I lift my hand up to feel my cheeks?
The world is bright at first, too white for me to see anything, but it soon returns back to view, but it isn’t right. It’s weird. Upside down.
“I know,” I mutter to Danny, who’s about the only thing I can remember in all of this, while he claws at my arm. “I don’t know what’s going on either.”
I try to place everything, to figure out how it all works now, but it doesn’t quite make sense. I don’t even know where we are...
“Oh wait! The car, of course...we are in the car. Danny, I...”
But as I turn, it isn’t my friend’s face looking back at me. It’s a stranger, what used to be a man, with graying skin detached from the bones of his face, hanging down like baggy clothes on a stereotypical orphan. Black blood slips from him and splatters onto what I now see is the roof of the car touching the ground. I honestly don’t know how it took me so long to notice because the stench is horrendous.
I guess I just know that as the smell of the world these days.
“Argh, shit.” I try to scoot backward, to get the hell away from this beast, but I’m all the wrong way and strapped in. “Danny, where the hell are you? I could use your help right now!”
The ice-cold fear that he might not actually be with me right now reminds me of another time when I got a friend killed through my stupidity. Enrico, my police buddy, got killed because I needed to help Katie.
That actually brought the nightmare of Ryan into my life.
Now, again because of Ryan, because I cannot stand to be around him, Danny might be dead too.
My shaking fingers try desperately to get me out before this man climbs further through the broken window and he manages to take a chunk out of me. I can’t have that; I can’t die too.
“Shit, come on...come on...!”
By some miracle, I pop free, but that only sends me cascading downwards towards the roof of the car, smacking myself hard on the metal. Luckily, my survival instinct kicks in and I shimmy myself out of the car, into the stinking fresh air.
“Oh my God.” They are everywhere, surrounding me. Danny too, if he’s around somewhere, I’m not totally convinced that he is. “How the hell am I going to get out of here?”
I dart my eyes everywhere, desperately searching for my escape, but the panic has my eyes blurry. I can’t really see past my nose.
I might actually die here; I might finally lose my battle against the undead and my own sanity. This is the one time I might not survive.
This is it.
Emma
The loneliness is getting to me. There’s no denying that. I think I might even be cracking up. Being alone for this length of time isn’t normal. No one should ever have to face it. I think that might be the worst thing about the apocalypse, not the undead roaming the streets, or the starvation all the time. No, the fact that I don’t have anyone else to talk to.
“Hey,” I murmur to the nearest monster to me. He’s across the street so he isn’t close enough to hear me and I’m not going to make the mistake of being loud again, I only just got away from that hoard, but just for a moment, I want to pretend that I have a friend. “How are you?”
I don’t get any response, not even a groan, which I suppose is a good thing. But it still reminds me that I don’t have anyone else. I’m all alone.
I even went back home. I don’t know what I was thinking, I just wanted to see someone even if it’s my crazy parents, but they aren’t there anymore. The house is empty.
> I really am by myself in this crazy world.
“You probably wouldn’t want to be my friend anyway,” I continue talking to my non-friend. “In life, you were probably too cool for me. No one really wanted to be my friend. Well, until Rachael. You know, she was just about to start at our school, I was finally going to have a new friend, but then this happened. The apocalypse, or whatever you want to call it.” I sigh loudly. “Then she still wanted to be my friend, she still wanted to come to my house, but my parents sent her away, making sure that I had to survive this by myself.”
The sad this is I didn’t even care about my lack of friends back then; I knew that everything would be okay, and I’d flourish in the real world. Now, I will never get that chance. I will never be able to shine, that side of my life has been stripped away from me. Even if there is someone out there working on a cure, I don’t know if it will ever really happen.
This, to me, feels like the end of humanity.
Maybe it’s time to give up die, perhaps continuing to fight isn’t worth it.
With that one morose thought in mind, I edge closer to my friend, actually asking to be killed. I want the flesh to be ripped from my bones, to be eaten. It’s better than trying to live with nothing. I don’t want to become one of those beasts, I want to die, and this feels like the easiest way, it saves me from being active, I can continue to be passive...
But as the scent of death infects my nostrils, I’m not sure it’s the best idea after all. My survival instinct kicks in and I panic. Do I live, or do I die? Who the hell knows anymore?
Katie
“Still no sign of him?” Ryan asks me smugly.
I sigh but don’t turn around to face him. I don’t want to give him any satisfaction. His words are getting to me, of course, they are, but I don’t want him to know that.
“He mustn’t be back,” Ryan continues, poking the bear. “Or you wouldn’t be forlornly leaning over the fence, wondering where he is as darkness shrouds us.”
“Shut up,” I shoot back pettily. “He’ll be back any moment and I just want to wait for him alone.”
But of course, Ryan ignores me, and he climbs up the ladder to join me on my plank of wood. The watching post which is usually manned by a guard but today just has me.
“You used to like me,” he reminds me. “I think you liked me for a long time?”
I swivel and stare at him, wide-eyed. “You knew?”
“Of course, I knew! I just didn’t go for it then.”
“No, you had two other women as girlfriends instead.”
I focus my eyes back out on the long path ahead of us. The long, dark, empty path which Oliver and Danny have to come back down any moment.
“Yeah, but they were never quite you, were they?”
He shimmies closer to me in a way that I’m sure he assumes is cute but is actually quite annoying. I make a point of moving away.
“Oh, come on, Katie. Don’t be like that. I’m sure I hurt your feelings by never reciprocating your feelings, but I’m here now. So are you. There must be a reason we have both survived.”
“The reason we are both alive is because of Oliver. Make no mistake about that. He saved my life over and over again and he rescued you from the hospital as well.”
Ryan says nothing, but I notice his arm edge towards me. Once upon a time, I would have given anything for Ryan to notice me, but that time is long past now. I only want to be with Oliver, nothing about Ryan attracts me anymore. I don’t think it ever will. The apocalypse has brought out a different side of both of us and I don’t like what it’s done to him.
“Ryan. I asked you to leave me alone and I stand by that.”
His finger reaches out to brush down my cheek and I snatch away as if I have been shocked.
“Katie, everyone is having fun here but you. This is the end of the world and people are taking that as an excuse to have a good time. Me and you could have some fun.”
I’m horror-struck by this; I absolutely cannot believe he’s saying these words to me. What the hell is wrong with him? Oliver goes and five minutes later he thinks I want to be with him? No way. Not a chance in hell. But I already know that asking him to leave will be pointless because he just won’t go.
For now, I’m stuck.
Rachael
“Alex,” I whisper to him, so quietly the word barely comes out. “I’m scared.”
He shoots me a look but doesn’t answer, which I don’t know how to take. He must feel the same heart-pounding sensation that I do, there’s no way that he can be here right now and be just fine. It seemed like a good idea when we broke into the leader’s meeting room, but now I’m not so sure.
The conversation in there has me fearing for my life. I wish I wasn’t listening to it.
Death, murder, blackmail.
It’s all going on here. Everything bad, the worst things of humanity that I didn’t dare worry about. Things I haven’t ever experienced before despite all the camps that I’ve been to. When I started on this mission with Alex, I assumed it would be a good way for us to connect with one another, I thought there could potentially be something there, I didn’t think we would actually find something out.
Things I don’t want to know.
I slide my eyes closed as booming laughter bursts from that room, scaring the living hell out of me. It’s such a nasty, evil sound it chills me to the bone. I want to run. But run far. I don’t just want to race back to my house here, I want to take Olivia and Alex and get the hell out of here. I want to warn Oliver too, so he can get all our crew out of here. I don’t want anyone to be on the horrible receiving end of this.
“Did he just say ‘skinned alive’?” I ask Alex as vomit fills my mouth. “We need to go.”
He doesn’t move right away though. He seems so determined to get information that he’s willing to put himself at risk. Me too.
I grab his hand and pull it, ignoring the fluttery sensation that runs up my arm. That must just be more of the sheer terror.
“Alex, we need to go. I need to go.”
This isn’t a game anymore. This is all too real and I hate it.
In the end, I stand up by myself and tiptoe away, heading towards the door so I can exit this building, but I don’t get far enough. There’s a deep pull in my chest, a yearning that wants to protect Alex as much as myself. I can’t seem to help it. I barely know the guy, yet he’s affected me in a way that overwhelms me.
I need him. I don’t know why but I do.
“Alex!” I hiss. “Alex, please. Don’t get us both killed.”
He glances at me but barely acknowledges me. It’s as if I don’t really exist. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.
“Alex, I...I’m leaving.”
I move some more, but still, he doesn’t come. I’m almost about to give up when the door flies open, and we don’t have any choice. We have to run as fast as we can to keep our lives intact.
Rhys
“Alex?” I lean in past our door and try to find him, just like I always do when I finish a shift of work. “Alex, you in?”
But I get nothing. Just a resounding silence greets me. A painful silence that hurts my chest. Of course, I don’t get a response. Alex barely even exists anymore in my world. I get it, I suppose, he’s spending a lot more time with Rachael. I presume romance is blossoming, and I’m happy for them. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s them.
Only...I am left behind.
I’m lonely, lost, sad as all hell. That’s the truth of it that I won’t admit aloud. Life here is good, it’s better than living on the road, but something is missing for me. I guess I’m constantly hunting for a happiness that isn’t going to happen.
Maybe there is no happiness in the apocalypse.
Others look like they have happiness, but it might be just an illusion. Maybe we are all just trying to convince ourselves that we’re all doing well. Just so we don’t all succumb to the cloud of gloom that is constantly hanging over my head
all the time.
If we were all like this, realizing the truth, then nothing would get done. We would all just lie down and wait to die. Which is very depressing.
I flop onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling to stare at the cracks that are slowly forming over time. I’m not expected to work now for at least another fourteen hours which means I have a long stretch ahead of me. Hours and hours of nothingness, time I have no idea how to fill. I can’t even seem to make any new friends; it just doesn’t happen for me. Maybe others can instinctively sense the heavy weight on my chest, and it puts them off me before I even have a chance.
Or perhaps I haven’t really tried.
A deep crack in the ceiling catches my attention, one that’s more frightening than the others, and I find myself staring at it for ages as the walls close in around me. What is this? What am I going to do? I know that I’ll never have the life that I originally dreamed for myself, the adulthood where I was supposed to become someone important. but at this rate, I’ll have no life at all.
If I don’t have something to aim for, something to look forward to, then what is the point of it all?
“Go out,” I tell myself sternly. “Meet people, find a purpose.”
But for some reason, even the thought of moving off of this bed is impossible. It’s become a task that my body won’t be able to deal with no matter what happens. Even if a fire lit under the bed, I don’t think I’d be able to move.
I’m heavy, everything aches, I’m stuck.
“Alex, I need you right now,” I murmur to myself. “I need someone to just see what the hell is going on with me.”
But he isn’t here and I’m starting to think that he won’t be again.
