We Are The Survivors

by Vanessa Marie

  His head lolls to one side. He is groggy. I stand in front of him. “Are there any more groups?” I ask.

  “No, what you saw was it.”

  “Are there keys to the rooms here?” I ask.

  He nods wearily. “Yeah, in my front pocket.”

  Dave sticks his hand in his pocket. He takes a keyring with about ten keys. “The girls are all there?” he asks.

  He nods. “I lost everything. I’m going to lose my life now. What do I care about them anymore? They were barters for weapons, clothes. I lost everything?” he says.

  He is just giving up. A man who wanted to terrorize people. A man that loses his cool every five seconds.

  He nods and smiles.

  “It’s okay. Now I will be with my real sister,” he says laughing.

  It offends me somehow. “What’s funny?” I ask.

  “You didn’t think I would give away my family that easy, did you?” he asks.

  I cross my arms. “Maybe not, but I know there will be something that the oldest girl can tell me about the girls. She handled everything, didn’t she? She can tell me.”

  His facial expression is of defeat. “I should have killed her when I had the opportunity.” He looks at Dave.

  “You didn’t, that’s what matters,” I say.

  We could sit here for hours drilling answers from him. He won’t talk. I need to ask her before we do something.

  The three girls are sitting on the porch. Alyssa is covering her sister’s ears and eyes.

  “Is he dead?” she asks.

  “No. Amber, do you know anything about the other girls he had? Is there any other place they could be?” I ask.

  She narrows her eyes, her forehead creases. “This was the other group?” she asks. “They came after you? We heard the shots but we didn’t know if you were shooting.”

  “You didn’t know about them?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  I go to the room where Blake is. “She was just your maid, huh?” I ask.

  He nods. “She was. I controlled the others for the most part. I elected a leader to keep people in line.”

  I pace. “I am so sick of the mind games now. Stop it. Where are they? You aren’t going to leave here. Where are they?” I ask.

  He smiles mischievously. Dave aims the gun at him. “Where are they?” he asks.

  He doesn’t say anything. Dave goes through his pockets. There is nothing in them. He shoots him in leg. He screams in pain.

  “The street name is Seashell street. The house number is 1315. There is a truck in the driveway,” he says.

  “We got the address, that’s all we needed. Rain step outside,” Dave says.

  “I want to ask some things,” I say to Dave. “Why me?”

  “I had no one else.”

  “How many people did your dad kill?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t keep up.” He shrugs.

  I sit on the floor. “I will never consider you my brother ever.”

  He nods. “I know. I tried to make you my sister but I failed.”

  I can’t watch this. It’s the end. “It’s time,” I say to Dave. I walk outside. Nya and May meet me. I hear the shot.

  It’s over. We’re safe.

  Dave walks outside.

  “You…did it?” I ask.

  He nods in response.

  I ask Nya what happened and she says that his sister was kidnapped by Fred. That they kept her for years and told everyone that she was dead.

  I did that. I reunited them. If it weren’t for my escape they probably wouldn’t have reunited.

  We go down the hallway to see if the girls are here. Dave kicks open the first door. A young girl my age is hugging her knees in the corner of the room. She is about my age. She has long brown hair and blue eyes. She is wearing a T-shirt and jeans.

  “It’s okay. We are letting you go,” I say.

  She looks up from her knees. “Are you the police?”

  She must have been kidnapped before the apocalypse. I help her up. She runs to the front door. I can’t blame her.

  We open the doors one by one. We tell them that we can take them to their groups. They agree. They range from twelve to sixteen years old.

  All of them were going to be killed. It makes me feel better about what Dave did. What we had to do. We saved this people, all of us.

  We go into a room the last room. It’s filled with money. From wall to ceiling is a huge stack of dollar bills. They have notes on each stack of a girl’s name, price and date. I read one.

  Jenny’s Family

  $250,000 Ransom

  Obtained 8/01/16

  The date is the day the apocalypse happened. All this money from ransom, of no value now. I have the instinct to take it. I grab a stack of hundred dollar bills. I’ve never seen this much money in my life. There is well over a million dollars in here.

  “A shitload of money,” Dave says.

  “Yeah.”

  He grabs a stack of it. “Should we take it, just in case the world gets put together?”

  “We need room for the girls. It’s invaluable now, it always will be” I say.

  I close the door. He smiles. “I can hear it crying. It hurts me not to take it,” he says.

  “Me too.”

  The girls fit snugly in the flatbed. There isn’t any room to move. A twelve-year-old girl chats with Pamela the whole way to where her group is. She says she lives here with her family. They talk about video games and shows they miss. It’s good they got to be kids again even for just ten minutes.

  Dave pulls up to her house which is a manufactured home. The parents open the door. She jumps out of the flatbed. She runs to them and hugs them. The parents meet with Dave.

  “Thank you for this. Do you want food or guns or anything?” the mother asks.

  The mother shares the same light brown hair and blue eyes with her daughter.

  “We’re good.”

  We drive to the other houses to drop them off. We get a thank you from every one and we get offers of food, clothing and weapons. By the fourth offer Dave accepts the weapons from a family. They give us twenty guns which we load in the flatbed and a ton of ammo.

  Each of the girls hug me before leaving. They wave as we drive away. The last girl is the first girl we rescued. Her name is Fiona. I tell her about the apocalypse. She tells us she wants to stay with us and we can meet her family tomorrow. We agree with her. She doesn’t speak much. She is overwhelmed by this. It will take time for her to absorb this.

  She is about my age. She has brown hair with blonde highlights from her roots to her ends. She has beautiful green eyes.

  She is in a dirty, light grey long sleeve shirt with jeans.

  The truck stops. I open the window of the cab. Dave bangs his fists on the steering wheel. “Damn it!” he says.

  “No gas,” I guess.

  “None. I thought we would have enough. The gas station is a few miles away. Someone has to get it.”

  “I could,” I say.

  “No!” Dave commands.

  “If we can’t make it to the house we can’t get the others. Let me get it.”

  He bangs on the steering wheel. “That’s how Alex died, getting gas. Nya is going with you.”

  I grab a rifle and Nya takes a revolver. The walk is long. I can see the gas station in the distance. Nya sighs and starts walking. “Stay put,” I yell over my shoulder.

  The sun shines in my eyes. I shade it from my face with my hand. The weather is warmer today.

  “Today was good, other than what we had to do. It was good we could save some people, I mean, haven’t felt like this much,” she says.

  “I know,” I say.

  “I’m sorry about your Uncle. I’m sorry for Gavin too.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  She doesn’t know what to say after that. It’s awkward between us.

  The gas station is closer. We run there. The gas station is locked. I throw a rock through the gla
ss door. I crawl through it. Nya follows me. She takes a tube and goes to a car. She tells me to check here for food while she syphons gas. She carries two gas cans with her.

  I grab some candy, chips and a bag of trail mix. It’s something. I grab a soda for myself. I remember when we threw soda bottles at zombies and watched them slip in it. It was hilarious.

  I hear a growl. I turn and throw the bottle at a zombie instinctively. I bring the gun up to shoot it. It grabs my arm making me drop the gun. I throw the zombie against the refrigerated doors. I go to grab my gun.

  It pulls me by my legs. I yell Nya’s name. She can’t hear me. The zombie gets on top of me trying to bite me. I punch him in the face. The skin on his nose peels off and I can see bone. I wipe the dead skin on my jeans. I grab my gun and shoot it. It goes limp on me. I push it off. I scrub the blood on my face with my sleeve. I try to catch my breath.

  I meet Nya outside. She asks me if there was one in there. I tell her I took care of it. She tells me we can go.

  On the walk to the car I think about Blake, where he is now. I believe in reincarnation and that there is no hell. I believe we are meant to play a certain part in this world even if you are evil. He was a bad person but hopefully he isn’t in the next life. I wish that his soul reincarnates into a better person. I thank God and Goddess that I’m alive now.

  Nya pours the gas cans into the car. We get to Carrie’s house. Gavin and Sarah are sitting at the table. She is hugging him. His eyes are closed. I sit next to him.

  “We’ll bury them at the community,” I say. “All of them.”

  We took a car and filled it with gas to get home. The group rode in the car with Nya driving. Dave picked up Alex’s, Kevin’s and Mom’s bodies’. We planned to bury them outside the walls where my boyfriend tells me Oakland is buried.

  When I got in the house the kids ran to me and hugged me. They told me they missed me. I told them I missed them too.

  While Dave is digging the graves where next to Oakland, I write a eulogy for my mom, my uncle and Alex. I have no clue what to say about Oakland. It kills me to do it. I try to tell myself they are in a better place. I know they are, I just miss them so much.

  After Dave is done we go outside. We gather around their graves. We are all dressed in black because we felt it was appropriate.

  I took boulders to serve as their headstones. I carved their names in the stones with a pebble. Not anything like what my family would have wanted.

  Xavier steps in front of Oakland’s grave. “He was a nice guy. We didn’t know a lot about him but he still guarded this place. He was helpful and quiet. I wish we could get to know him better, I would have loved to be friends with him. I hope you can guard the gate to the afterlife for us, if anyone can it’s you. I’m just glad to say that you’re up there with your family, away from this.”

  May puts roses on Uncle Kevin’s grave. Gavin puts his arm around aunt May. She cries on his shoulder.

  “My dad was great. He used to take me everywhere. He taught me how to hunt, how to be kind to everyone, how to live life the right way. I’m going to miss him forever,” he says stopping because he started to cry too.

  “Alex was a wonderful person. Again, I didn’t know much about him to be able to…” Xavier stares at his grave.

  I step forward to finish his eulogy. “Alex was a great person. He tried to save me. He didn’t care that he was dying. He tried to help me escape. He would talk to me all the time and he would try to keep hope alive. I think we should keep hope alive. In his last words, he said that one day I would forget about all of this. That I would be happy, not sad about everyone being gone. The only way to remember Alex and the others is to live by their code every day. Never let hope…go.”

  By this moment everyone is crying.

  My mom’s grave is last. I spent a lot of time planning what I was going to say. I didn’t want it to be quick. I wanted in to go more into detail. I read from the paper I wrote on. Some people cry my aunts walks inside the house in tears. I’ll leave the paper on the ground near the boulder. The wind will blow it away but I don’t care.

  I don’t know how I can get past this. Then I smile because the thought of my parents being together now can get me through. All she ever wanted was to be with my father.

  I put the paper on the ground. Everyone walks in the house with me.

  We won the war against Blake, even the zombies since we have the cure.

  I won a little but I also lost a little.

  Rain’s Eulogy

  My mom was a wonderful person. She was the sweetest person ever. She was my best friend. She will live on even though she’s gone. She was loved by everyone. There wasn’t one person she didn’t make happy. She’s with my dad in a better place. I hope she is looking down on us now.

  She would be proud of what we built here. She would be proud of Sarah and Gavin. She would be proud of May for raising us. I only hope she is proud of me.

  EPILOGUE

  Four months later

  Rain

  These past months have been great for me. They’ve been great for all of us. I returned, you could say, to my old self. I took up witchcraft as a religious practice. Craven told me before he left that Cassandra had left a book for me. It’s the one I had started reading.

  Craven left for Pahrump yesterday. Dave gave him a hug when we said goodbye. Dave told him to keep in touch. He said he would. He took his armory along with him. Which isn’t a huge loss since we could get guns from the groups Blake had.

  The night we buried everyone my aunt left to return Alyssa and Pam. Gavin drives me over from time to time to see them. I’ve gotten close with Alyssa, she’s a big sister to me. Pam and Adelyn have gotten close too. They are best friends. Adelyn told me she never had a best friend other than her brother before. It feels good that they can have something of a life.

  Zane’s group is pretty set where they are. They even have water over there. Zane tried to explain how it works but I still don’t understand. They even have an armory they added recently. They also have a ton of medicine too.

  We dipped into his medicine a lot with our wounds. They are healed now except Zane’s. His wound was too bad for him to walk; he will never walk again. He is handling it better than I would expect someone to.

  We are handling our grief better too. My aunt has come to terms with it along with my cousin. She just isn’t over it, which is what I would expect.

  I miss everyone but I’m not sad about it anymore. I don’t cry anymore.

  We’ve been going back and forth so much that my cousin, my boyfriend and I are making the decision to move there.

  This community is great. They have electricity, an armory, the same amount of stuff that Zane has, but May’s not here. I stay with family no matter what.

  Today I’m going to tell Dave. I’m dressed in a purple sweater, jeans and black boots from what we picked up at a store.

  Dave, Nya and Kay are in the kitchen. The kids and Sarah are at the table eating breakfast.

  Adelyn is wearing a purple shirt with daisies on it and jeans. Avian picked out a shirt that has a video game title I’ve never heard of on it and jeans. We took anything we could get at various stores. Nya finally got her fur coats and leather jackets. I don’t see why she would want to wear such nice clothes to be killing zombies. I guess she is only going for style, which doesn’t matter now.

  The three of us bring up moving.

  “Dave, we wanted to let you know that we want to move where my aunt is,” I start.

  “I want to live with my mom instead of going back and forth. Sarah is coming with us too,” Gavin steps in.

  “Oh, it’s going to be weird without you guys living here. I’ll miss you guys,” he says.

  I smile and nod. “I’ll miss you too.”

  “I get it. You want to be close to your family,” Nya says.

  “Right,” I agree.

  I grab my bags and the boys’. Dave offers to give us a ride. Marina wa
lks in the dining room.

  “What are the bags for?” she asks.

  “They’re staying with Zane’s group,” Dave says.

  “You’re leaving?” she asks with a sad expression on her face.

  I nod. She hugs me. We get to the door. The bags are very heavy.

  “Wait!” Dave says.

  We turn. He looks at Kay. “Let’s all go with them. This place is fine. They have a shower system. It would be pretty weird to take a shower without living there, I’ve been dying for one,” he says.

  Avian stands. “Let’s do it. Kay, he really smells can’t we go there?”

  She smiles. “Okay, are we planning on coming back?” she asks.

  “Yeah, just live there for a while. I can run this place, stay here for a few weeks making sure it’s safe and I can get someone else to run it for me,” he says.

  I speak up, “That’s great that you are going to live with us but leaving like this is a bad idea.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” he says.

  You don’t say that; you never say that. That’s jinxing this whole situation.

  I shut my mouth because I don’t want to ruin this.

  Everybody goes into a frenzy to pack their clothes. Dave loads the car completely with bags. If Zane didn’t offer us a place to stay he would probably kill us for this. Dave says he will come back for the weapons and food later.

  We set up a bed on the shelves when we get there. It’s a good idea. Zombies can’t get us if they break in here by chance. I set pallets up as a desk and then I make a nightstand. Xavier gets the shelf next to mine.

  I ask Dave if I can ride back with him. He tells me I can. Zane says he will help us get the weapons and food. Dave refuses to let him help. Zane insists. He rolls to the car. Dave puts him in the passenger’s seat. His wheelchair goes in the trunk. I let my family know where I’m going. They know my every move now since I was kidnapped.

  The drive there is nice. The men talk and joke around. Life has gotten to a normalcy. Dave parks outside the wall. He says he will open the gate for us to come in. He walks there then runs back to the car. He gets in and drives away.