by Sands, Samie
Then my time nearly came to an end in Katie’s hospital, but again I escaped death. I’ve been living on borrowed time for a long time now, and it’s time for that to come to an end because I haven’t been living well, I haven’t been making the most of my life now.
I find this existence too hard, it’s eating away at me every single day, making me more of a burden with every passing moment. I don’t see life getting back to normal, but even if the planet found a way to recover from this virus, I don’t think I’d be able to ever be me again.
Plus, I know that we don’t talk about it, probably because you can’t stand it just as much as me, but we both know this place isn’t good. We both heard things. That’s what sent me down this path, knowing even my sanctuary isn’t good. I don’t know if it can last. I think it might fall apart soon, so please, protect yourself.
I’m a coward, I know I am. This is all on me. But you can do better, Alex. You deserve to live through this because you are the only person I know who could come through this and be a better person. Don’t hate me for leaving you, just use this to make you stronger, please.
I love you,
Rachael.
She loved me...but still, I wasn’t enough to keep her living. Still, she chose death by an overdose. And Benji is going to get away with it. He might have supplied the drugs, but she knew what she was doing, she chose this.
“I can’t let him get away with this,” I growl to myself. “I can’t let him live. Not after he killed Rachael. Everyone else might forgive him, but I never will.”
This isn’t what Rachael would have wanted for me, I know that, but I need him dead. The burning emotions are being overshadowed by rage and I need to take it all out on him. I need him gone. It won’t bring Rachael back, but it still has to happen.
Oliver
“I will kill you!”
Those words spark something. It’s like a flame has been flickering, just waiting to explode, and those words are the ignition needed to make it all erupt, to burn the world down around us.
The screaming and yelling, the fighting that has been brewing ever since Rachael was found dead, breaks loose and within seconds, I lose all control of the sanctuary surrounding me.
I don’t think the young guy charging towards Benji, wanting him dead as well, wanted chaos to be the cause of his actions, but that’s what’s happened anyway. An unintended consequence.
“Stop!” No one can hear me. It’s too loud now. “Stop!” But I have to keep trying. Hell lies outside of our camp walls and if we aren’t careful, we’ll invite it in. “Stop, everyone. Stop. We can’t fight among ourselves. Think about what’s out there!”
But humans don’t seem to surround me anymore. It’s primal, animalistic, scary. Worse than hell. I don’t feel like I have any choice. I grab my gun and fire a warning shot in the air, glad that at least this will stop people...not that it does. The sound of the shot dissipates into nothingness as the endless battle that’s come from a place of serious unrest rages on.
“Oliver, run.” I feel the warm fingers belonging to Katie wrapped around my arm. “Get away from this. It’s getting out of control. There isn’t anything you can do.”
My heart thunders against my chest, I know that I need to be here, I’m needed.
“No, I can’t. I have to stop this, Katie. But get yourself safe, please. You can’t get hurt.”
“I don’t want to leave you...”
I cup her face in my cheeks and crash my lips to hers hard. I have to capture her attention, to make her really hear me because I don’t want to be worried about her as well.
“You’re the medical help here, Katie. We are going to need you in a moment. People are hurt.” I don’t even want to think about the blood already shed. “You need to be safe and I have to stop this.” I smile in a way that I hope reassures her. “I need to stop the fight.”
“Don’t get hurt,” she pleads with a whimper. “I need you, Oliver, we all do.”
Her reaction shows me just how serious this is. This mess is the worst that we’ve ever had to face, in this camp anyway, perhaps a long time ago we had dangers like this regularly, but that only shows how well we can do, how much of a sanctuary this can be if we let it, which is why it’s even more important to calm everyone down.
“Go, Katie.” She starts to slip away from me, her fingers letting go. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she yells, although I can barely hear her. “Come back to me soon, okay?”
Soon might be an issue, because this only appears to be getting worse, but I will get back to her no matter what...
Rhys
“Alex, no!”
I watch in horror as my old best friend charges towards Benji, screaming something about killing him. This is what I tried to warn Hugh about, this is what I have been so scared of. The unrest within this camp has been brimming to erupt for a long time, and now...
“Oh, God.”
Chaos explodes. Alex isn’t the only one fighting, the emotion spills over and yelling consumes the whole camp. As a soldier, this should be something that I need to control, but we’ve only been trained to fight the enemy outside the walls, not within. I tried to suggest this might happen, but no one listened to me, and now it’s too late.
Now...
The moment bullets begin firing in the air, I grab my own gun, gulping down the sheer terror threatening to swallow me up whole. This just got serious and now we might have to deal with even more dead bodies. As if Rachael’s wasn’t enough.
I still can’t believe one of my oldest friends from this world isn’t around anymore. It kills me how she went, but I can’t think about her now. I have to calm this down.
“The walls!” someone manages to be heard over the racket of everyone else. Maybe because there’s an ice-cold fear in their tone which strikes everyone. “The walls have come down.”
A near-silence follows. Some people continue to battle on among themselves because they don’t realize the enormity of what’s going on, but others are struck by this news. The walls have separated us from the beasts outside since we got here. They might have been struggling a bit recently and some of them have even required some repairs which we haven’t yet got to, but those words suggest it might be too late.
“The walls?” I whisper. “They’re down.”
I back away from the crowd, no longer feeling brave like a soldier should. My initial animal instinct is to run, to save myself, because if any of those walls have broken while so much noise is erupting then we are about to have a much bigger problem on our hands.
We are about to be flooded by the undead.
The gun trembles in my hand, it no longer feels like it belongs to me, it’s too heavy for me, it doesn’t sit right between my shaky, sweaty fingers. It’s slipping, I know that I’m losing control of it, and I can’t stop. I can’t gather myself back up again.
Fighting them out there is one thing, that’s controlled, and we can’t lose the innocent, but them in here means everyone could die. I could lose my home and everyone within it. I can’t see that happen, I don’t know if I can stop it either, all I can do is escape...
“Argh!”
A scream bursts from my chest as hot pain radiates through me. I grab my shoulder which is now covered in unexpected blood and spin on my heels.
There I find myself faced with my worst nightmare; my own personal hell come to life in front of my very eyes.
It’s over. I’ve lost.
We have lost.
Katie
“Urgh, what the hell?”
I push myself up into a sitting position while rubbing my aching head, wondering how I managed to get knocked out in all the chaos erupting in the camp. I was escaping, hiding to help out Oliver so he isn’t worried about me, but something must have gone wrong.
“Where I am?” I don’t recognize this place at all. “What’s going on?”
“Ah, you’re awake.” I’m chilled to the bone as the voic
e greets me. This isn’t someone I want to see in a crisis. “I’ve been worried about you. I thought you were hurt.”
“Ryan?” I try to scoot backward, but I can’t move because I’m tied to a metal pole in this dark, damp room. “I am hurt. What’s happening? Why are we here? Where is everyone else?”
“Oh, dead, I imagine.”
“Dead?” My eyebrows knot together. “Is that some kind of sick joke? How can you be so callous?”
“You saw the chaos out there.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Something happened in the middle of it all and brought the walls down. The infected got in, so I saved you.”
Urgh, he’s so gross. Such a sick and twisted person. How did I ever used to like this man? It seems insane now to think that I admired him for such a long time when he’s so dreadful. Sure, the world falling apart might have dragged the worst out of him, but that side of him must have always been there. I just didn’t see it.
“So, everyone is dead?”
I think I might need to play his game, just for a moment. Otherwise, I won’t be able to gather up all the information I need to escape this. So, however much it sickens me, and I want to yell at this man, I don’t think he’ll release me with ease.
This is my survival instinct kicking in and leading the way.
“I would imagine so.” He shrugs one shoulder. “It’s a mess out there. Bodies, blood, infected...”
“And you saved me? How?”
“I grabbed you before one of those beasts could get you. You hit your head on the way, but that was an accident. I just wanted to save you.”
He’s lying, I can see it on his face. He planned this all along and just took the opportunity of the chaos to put his plan into action. I may be injured but I'm not dumb.
“And where is this place? It’s set up well...”
“I made it a while back.” He smiles proudly as if this is a good thing. “Just in case of a situation like this. I wanted to have somewhere to go in an emergency. With you, of course. I was never going to save myself without looking after you too.”
I stare at him defiantly. “So, if you’ve saved me, why am I tied up?”
“Because I don’t want you to go,” he tells me as if this is obvious. “It’s dangerous out there. No one else can look after you and keep you safe as Oliver has proved. You are the safest with me.”
Wow, he’s suggesting that I’m safe in the place where I most fear for my life. I need to get out of here. I have to escape. I don’t even want to think about the possibility of everyone no longer being alive. If I consider that, I will give up, so I will focus on this one step at a time.
And this step is me getting away from him...
Emma
Humans...I can sense them at long last.
I’ve been searching for other humans ever since I left my parents all that time ago, not that I can even remember when that was anymore, it’s all just a distant memory, something that happened a long time ago.
Sometimes I even think it might have happened to someone else.
I’m not me anymore, that much I can be sure of. Trust me to find other humans the moment I’m no longer myself, no longer able to mix with them and find safety as I’d like. After all, this time when I greet them, I’ll be the danger.
Even though the virus is eating me alive, I have a tiny bit of rationality left. Just enough to know this isn’t right. But the only human aspect of me won’t win out, not this time. My primal, animal instincts are driving me, my deep-seated hunger which overshadows everything else. I had cravings when I was myself, a need for chocolate or spaghetti bolognaise now and again, but it wasn’t ever like this. I didn’t need anything this bad.
This is indescribable. This is on another level.
Soon, my hunger will be quenched as well, and everything will be better.
Perhaps just these humans need to die to keep me alive. Maybe once I’ve followed the crowd of infected through the hole in the wall, into the camp which smells full of human flesh, once that’s all over I may well be able to think straight once more. To focus on my morals rather than my desperate desires once more.
Perhaps one human killed will be enough for me.
But, oh my, they smell so damn good. I might as well be salivating because I’m so excited to wrap my teeth around whoever I can get my hands on first. I know, deep down, there’s no going back after this. I’ll lose myself completely, the girl I once was will be no more. I’ll succumb completely to the AM13 virus and be no more.
The blackness might be better, the blankness may be welcome. It has to be better than this in-between stage anyway, where I’m not quite human and I’m also far too aware of all the disgusting things that I’ve done. I will be glad to say goodbye to that...
But it’s still sad, isn’t it? Giving up, losing my life, knowing it didn’t have to be this way. There are so many ways I could’ve dealt with this so much better, so many questions I’m left asking myself.
What if I never left my parents?
What if I didn’t meet Rachael and didn’t try to help her?
What if life was back to how it was?
As my teeth sink into the first piece of human flesh, I can get my hands on, I slip away like grains of sand. I can’t keep hold of myself however hard I try. Finally, there is no more me, I’m just another one of them.
Evil.
The enemy.
Death.
Oliver
“Katie!” I should be quiet, the undead are all around us and I have seen firsthand the damage they can do, but my fear for Katie is too much, my need to find her overwhelming. “Katie, where are you? Katie, are you here?”
The last time I saw her, she was leaving to secure herself inside, away from the chaos. At that moment, it was just the humans battling one another, a fight that we maybe could have gotten under control given half the chance, but then the walls broke and the infected got inside...
Now all I can see is death around me. Everything that we built here is gone.
Everyone inside of this camp has fought hard to get somewhere safe to live, we have all destroyed demons to survive and this is the closest thing to a home that I’m sure any of us have found. To see it all gone tears me apart from the inside out, I can’t stand it. I hate seeing people I considered friends and family gone. Some of them dead, utterly destroyed, and others now working for the enemy, a slave to their need for human flesh.
But I can’t imagine Katie is one of them, I can’t stand that idea. It’s too much.
“Katie, where the hell are you? I need to find you right now.”
But there is too much noise around me, too many people panicking, fighting, looking for their own loved ones. My battle to find Katie, the woman I love more than anything in the world, is my own, and I won’t rest until I find her. I know that she loves me too, so she wouldn’t leave without me either. Even if she had to get away to keep herself alive, she will be back for me, I just know it. I just need to be patient, to wait until she returns, to be confident in our love.
“Looking for someone?”
Oh God, that voice is too smug, I already hate the owner of it before I even spin around. Of all the people who have died, this vermin continues to remain and that makes me sick.
“Ryan.” I can hardly meet his eyes; I don’t have time for this. “Leave me alone. I’m looking for Katie.”
“What a surprise, everything goes wrong and you’ve lost her again. I keep trying to tell Katie that you aren’t good enough for her, that you can’t be trusted...hopefully, now, she’s finally listened and gone. Saved herself.”
I’m so angry, so emotional, I do the only thing I can and shove him away. I don’t want to harm him, not really, I just want him gone so I can focus on my mission. Katie is the only person I care about at all. Right now, this is just unnecessary background noise.
“You are going to regret that,” Ryan growls angrily, not as willing to back down as me. “Just you wait and see.”
It doesn’t take me long to find out what he means because, in seconds, everything goes black...
Alex
Everyone is dead. Everyone around me is gone. Yet somehow, I am still standing. I don’t understand it. I don’t get why I have been chosen to continue existing in this hell. Don’t I deserve to be punished since I started all of this? My rage at Benji unleashed everything.
The sad thing is beating Benji didn’t help me, seeing him die didn’t make me feel any better, none of it brings Rachael back, I still have the suicide note from her, proof that she’s gone. Now, most other people have joined her except for those who ran, and everything is so much worse. It’s all over.
This camp might not have been the safe haven that could hold us forever, there were issues here beyond anything that two teenagers could’ve dealt with, but we had walls around us, people living alongside us, it was almost like normal life.
Almost, but not quite enough.
“What now?” I cry out to myself. “What now?”
I want to scream, to yell, to lash out. I want some of this frustration to leave my body before I explode like a pressure cooker as I reach my limit, but I don’t have the emotional energy for any of that. I guess I’ve given up. I’m waiting for death. Waiting to join everyone else.
“Alex?”
At first, I think I imagine my name being called out. I’m so desperate for company that I’m making up friends, but then the groaning comes a second time, then a third.
“Rhys!”
Oh my God, Rhys. My one-time best friend who I still care lots for. Sure, we drifted apart when our lives went in opposite directions here, when I focused everything on Rachael and he joined the soldiers, but I’m still glad to hear from him.
I rush quickly over the bodies until I reach where he’s collapsed.
