Tag

by Everheart, AJ

  Ethan is a faster runner than me, and he takes off down the corridor and around a corner. A few seconds later, I hear a howl, and my heart stops. When I finally reach him, I find him doubled over with an arrow shaft protruding from his thigh.

  Chapter Two

  Mia

  I just shot someone. A person. A human. Not a zombie. My palm is sweaty around my bow, and I’m terrified. It has been a year since the outbreak, almost twelve months exactly, and while I’ve met other people, it has never ended well. The world has gone to shit, and suddenly, everyone thinks it’s a free for all. They come, occasionally, stumbling upon this place, and they take food and whatever else they can get their hands on. I learned early on not to trust anyone, I learned that I am just another commodity in this hellhole. But I got my revenge, I am always the last one standing. I make sure of it.

  Today was the same as it has been for the last forty-two; I woke up, I got dressed, I checked the traps for fresh meat, and that’s when I heard it. I heard the tin cans at the main gate clink and crash together, which could mean only one thing―unwanted visitors. I left the rabbit in the trap and ran back to the school. I hid on the first floor while I tried to determine if it was a zombie, and there was somehow a breach in my defences, or if it was a person.

  Another alarm gets tripped out in the sports sheds, and my heart feels like it’s going to burst—was I being overrun? Was it finally happening?

  I relax a little when I catch sight of two men coming up the stairs, men I could handle. Rabid, flesh-eating crazies I could not. The paint delay gets triggered when one of them moves on to the trap step, and I use that as my cue to grab my bow and run. I move quickly down the corridor, but I stop when I see another man coming up the main stairs behind me. I need to think fast, or once he notices me, I’ll be trapped. The paint-covered stranger comes barrelling towards me, so I release the bowstring, and it catches him in the thigh.

  I try to sneak past the other man on the main stairs, but I don’t get far once the paint guy screams out. He’s quicker than me and wraps his arms around my waist as he tackles into me from behind, knocking me to the ground.

  “Alex, we’ve got her!” he shouts, as they pull me to my feet and his friend binds my hands with rope.

  I was caught. After all the preparation I’d done, all the traps I’d laid, I had been caught easily. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, but right now, I need to bide my time. The paint man is being helped along by a friend, who my assailant names Alex as he calls him over again.

  “Jesus, girl, you’ve given us a run for our money,” he laughs. “Is there anyone else here?”

  I say nothing but glare at him with all the hatred I can muster. I’m dragged downstairs as we all shuffle down to the dining room. They tie me to a chair, and we are joined by two others, making six intruders in my home.

  “Alex, there’s some food here but not a lot. She probably couldn’t have lasted the winter.”

  A woman with blonde hair steps forward. “I spotted a greenhouse and an allotment out by the sheds. There are also traps.”

  They’d obviously been snooping around and found my gardens. Bet they even took my rabbit.

  “You have fresh food?”

  Again, I say nothing. They already know, so why do they need me to confirm it? I watch Alex, he’s in his mid-twenties maybe, with dark hair and blue eyes. He’s on the skinny side, but then, they all are. High cheekbones and a strong jawline make him handsome, but we don’t live in a world where beauty makes you the top of the food chain any longer. In fact, being beautiful is dangerous these days. There were survivors of the apocalypse, those immune, those who remained un-bitten, and they came together to build communities and gangs. Not all of them were still entirely human. They were monsters, feral, wild humans who were almost as bad as the zombies. How did I know that? Because twice scouts had stumbled in here. The first time, I had been welcoming, and they took advantage of my hospitality, of me. The second time, I was ready for them.

  This group seemed different though; they hadn’t hurt me or threatened me. Not even when I had injured one of their own. Alex paces the room, looking out of the windows into the courtyard.

  “It’s starting to get dark. Let’s make sure everything is locked back up and settle in for the night. Lee, Dai―get on it. Find some water for Ethan to get cleaned up with too.”

  A young man, maybe seventeen with dirty blond hair, green eyes, and a scar running down his face, and another guy, with olive skin, a beard, and dark brown eyes, grab their bags and leave the hall. The woman has pulled out a first-aid kit and is bandaging the man I shot.

  “We’re going to stay here?” she asks, her voice incredulous as she eyes me with disgust.

  Alex turns and crosses his arms. “Did you want to get caught trying to get back to camp now?”

  The man who caught me is sitting on one of the tables, sharpening a knife. “No, we’ve made too much noise today. Drifters will be coming this way.”

  “Exactly my thinking, Donovan. Why risk it?” Alex crouches down by the fireplace and starts stacking logs. His sleeves ride up as he reaches out to grab the next piece of wood, and I see ink snaking up his wrists, and I notice that his knuckles are covered in writing too.

  Once a good fire is raging, heating the room comfortably, he sits down before me, hands clasped together around his knees. Up close, I can see his hands, one set of knuckles say ‘Sink’ and the other reads ‘Swim.’ I wonder who he was before the apocalypse, because he wasn’t a saint―I could tell that much. There was an edge to him, he was almost enjoying this. Here and now, he may be a leader, but before, he was probably a waste of space.

  He puts a hand on my leg, and I flinch. He pulls it away, watching me carefully, and in his eyes, I can see pity. He knows exactly what this world is like now. What was once a sign of affection is now an indication of control—love is power, and everything good is rotten.

  “What’s your name, kid?” he says softly. “Are you here on your own?”

  “Mia,” I whisper, nodding, but I hadn’t always been alone.

  Chapter Three

  Alex

  I have no words for the girl who sat in front of me, she’s beautiful in a wild, feral sort of way. Her dark hair is tied back, but it still reaches halfway down her back. Stray strands fall down, framing her heart-shaped face. Big green eyes watch me carefully, she doesn’t trust me one bit, and that's okay―I never trust anyone either. She’s obviously been through something, and I don’t want to pry. She’s wearing a pair of leggings and what appears to be a school jumper, which explains how she came to be here and how she knew where to lay her little traps. But where was everyone else?

  “So, there’s no one else here?” I repeat. In a school, albeit a small school, how was she the only survivor? Was she immune to the zombie infection? We’d heard rumours that it was possible. We’d even met people who claimed that others had been infected but not turned, a hybrid of sorts. But I had yet to see it with my own eyes, and I didn’t believe it without proof.

  “No.”

  “Where are all the other students? Teachers? Heck, parents even?”

  She looks away but doesn’t say anything. I sigh. Something was wrong here, and if she didn’t give me something, I could be risking us all by staying here.

  Donovan strides over, and before I can stop him, he holds his knife against her neck. I can see a tiny droplet of blood forming near the tip of the blade as he presses into her skin.

  With so much anger in her eyes, she finally growls. “Take a walk down the road if you want to fucking know.”

  Donovan nods at me and steps back, and without saying anything, I know that he wants the two of us to go out at first light and take a look.

  “Let’s see if we can find any weapons here to take back with us,” Karen says as Lee and Dai return.

  Mia snorts and struggles briefly against her bindings.

  “What? No weapons?” Donovan asks.

  �
�It’s a school, idiot.”

  Ethan shouts across the room. “You had a crossbow!”

  “Because we used to do archery, and I sharpened the tips myself. But you won’t find any guns or anything here.”

  I raise an eyebrow at her, yes, guns are illegal in the UK, but you’d be surprised at how many people still managed to get their hands on one. I lived in London as a teenager, and I know that the gangs that ran around down there had no problems with finding weapons. They never did. We’ll scout around tomorrow and take what we can carry, but for tonight, I just want a decent meal and some sleep.

  Dai found a rabbit in a trap and set about making a stew with Karen, who peeled and chopped some carrots and potatoes. The smells that fill the room make my stomach ache, and I realise I haven’t had a proper meal in about three days.

  “It’s almost time to check in guys, any messages you want passed on?” I pull a small AM radio transmitter out of my pack as everyone shakes their head, apart from Dai. He has a nine-year-old daughter back at camp, and he likes me to send his love every time we check in. I decide the best place to go is back out into the courtyard, where I find an emergency exit staircase and climb up the metal steps, stopping when I reach the top. I just want this done with so I can go back inside and eat.

  Flipping the power on, I wait for an incoming message. From my vantage point, I have a clear view of the surrounding fields; when they end, the greenery continues into a forest. We came here through the woods and fields to the left, but to the right, there’s a lane that disappears behind the hedges. Is that what she meant by going down the road? I’d find out tomorrow what happened and whether Mia could be trusted.

  My radio crackles, and I check my watch again, still a few more minutes until check in. Something catches my eye in the distance, and I see a zombie just inside the tree line. I’d brought my binoculars with me just for this reason. It hasn’t spotted me and doesn’t seem aware that there are people inside the school, instead disappearing back into the darkness. A few more shadows move in the fields, hidden below the long grass, and while they aren’t charging at us, we’ve clearly disturbed the area.

  I’d watched all these films about zombies and terrorist attacks as a teenager, horror and thrillers were my favourite, but I never imagined it would happen. I never thought I’d be perched on a fire escape, with my binoculars, my radio, and a knife, watching out for the undead. The U.S. was hit before we were, the BBC even repeated their emergency broadcast. I can still remember it, it’s burned into my brain.

  **Attention Signal**

  The Centre for Disease Control in various states has issued a Viral Outbreak Warning. There have been reported cases of high fever, nausea, death, and even cannibalism. Please seek shelter now and stay indoors until further notice.

  **Attention Signal**

  We thought it was some sort of superbug outbreak, a mutated flu virus, that’s what they told us. All under control, they promised. Only a day later, chaos broke out in the cities, people were going crazy, attacking other people, biting them, eating them. Then, it just spread until everywhere was mayhem. The BBC started playing their own emergency broadcast, it was on every station, every channel. I later learned it was a system left in place after the war called a Four Minute Warning in case a nuclear attack was launched. Four minutes didn’t seem like a lot of time, but everything can change in two hundred and forty seconds.

  I’d been living in a grotty little flat with my mother in the outskirts of London. We’d moved when I got out of juvy at sixteen because she thought it would help ‘keep me on the right path,’ not that any of that mattered now. She died quickly when the outbreak happened, she’d been a nurse at King's College Hospital. I remember her laughing when she showed me the bite mark on her wrist, and told me about her crazy patient that morning. She said it was fine, she’d had all her shots, cleaned and dressed the wound. We thought she was fine.

  My radio crackles, but there’s still silence. I check my watch again, Basecamp should be radioing in now. I wait a few more minutes but still nothing.

  “Alex checking in. Over.”

  Nothing.

  “Alex calling Basecamp. Over.”

  The crackling is the only thing that greets me. My heart starts hammering in my chest again, and my mouth goes dry. The silence worries me, but in this world, where technology was stripped back to basics, there were a million things that could have gone wrong. Protocol said that I was to check in every two hours now until I heard something, and if I hadn’t heard anything by tomorrow, then it was time to panic. I climb back down, noticing two more zombies on the horizon as I go back inside. I couldn’t tell the others about this, it would only distract them, and until we had some more answers, there was no point. I plaster a fake smile on my face as I push open the dining hall doors only to be met with Mia launching herself at me.

  Chapter Four

  Mia

  Alex has been gone for a while, and I don’t like how the woman, Karen, keeps eyeing me up. She hates me, I can feel it in her glare. The others eat and mill around, have a good look. I’m disgusted at how they’re cataloguing everything, working out what’s useful or valuable, but then, I did the same a year ago. Lee wanders off towards the nurse’s office, and when he breaks the lock, I want to cry. He can’t be in there. No one is allowed in there.

  “Don’t!” I shout as his hand rests on the door. The others turn, and I feel like my skin is on fire the way they stare at me.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Karen grunts as she unties me and grabs me by the arm. Pulling me roughly along, she drags me to the door. “What’s in there?” she demands.

  I just shake my head.

  “Let her go in first, in case it’s another trap,” Lee suggests, as Donovan stands with my bow drawn and aimed at the door ready.

  Karen swings the door open and shoves me in first. No one says anything as they look at the skeleton chained to the radiator wearing a Rosehill uniform. There’s a stale, rotten smell that lingers in this room, and I remember when we first restrained her. She wasn’t herself, snapping and growling at us between crying out in pain.

  After a few moments, Dai spits on the ground. “That’s a fucking teenager. A child.”

  “That’s Susan…” I explain, refusing to look at her. It took almost three hours locked in this room for her to turn. She was no longer Susan when night fell, instead she was like a crazed animal, biting and lashing out. Her teeth kept grinding and gnashing, it’s a sound that still haunts my dreams. In the morning, I had rammed a large knife I’d found in the kitchen into her brain, just like all the films and books said. I waited in the room to make sure it was over, I stayed until the light in her feral eyes died. I couldn’t bring myself to move her body, and Ellie could barely function after that point, so we closed the door and pretended that Susan Baker wasn’t decaying inside. Pretended that she hadn’t been bitten by one of those things.

  “What the hell happened to everyone else, Mia?” Lee asks, as he looks around the room.

  “They’re dead. All of them,” I say it simply, because that’s all there is to this. Everyone is dead. I survived only by luck. I ran, I was the first to run, and if I hadn’t been, I would be dead too.

  Donovan inspects the bones, tapping the knife with an arrow so not to touch it himself. “Did you do this?”

  “Yes. I had to. She turned…”

  Karen pushes me to the floor, as she starts to help Lee go through the cupboards. We hadn’t been back in the nurse’s office after Susan died. All of the medicines were still in the cupboard, all the bandages and painkillers. All the tools and first-aid boxes were exactly where they were a year ago, useless to everyone who once lived here. Karen has her arms full of raided supplies as she squeezes past me, kicking me as she moves. Lee and Dai watch me wearily, as if I’m some sort of murderer. But I had to kill her. I had to.

  Donovan motions for me to stand, and we all go back into the dining room. He had drawn my bow again as a
precaution and watches me carefully. As I walk past, I hear Karen whispering with Ethan about how they can’t trust me. It’s the zombie apocalypse, don’t they know you can’t trust anyone? Ethan makes a comment about ‘getting his hands’ on me, and I shiver. Would they hurt me? Leave me out for the monsters to feast on? Karen says something, and Ethan chuckles. Even Donovan cracks a smile.

  The doors open, and as soon as I see Alex, I throw myself at him. I needed someone to be on my side, and I hoped to God I wasn’t wrong about him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I think they want to kill me,” I whisper.

  “Alex, Karen wants to kill her. The rest of us just want to leave her here,” Ethan calls out with a laugh.

  He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. His arm wraps around my waist, and he pulls me in close. I can’t remember the last time I was this close to another person of my own free will. I had let him touch me without wincing, that shouldn’t feel like an accomplishment, but it does. He smells like sweat and grass, it’s not unpleasant, this raw, earthy smell. In fact, it almost reminds me of summer.

  “Right, that’s enough. Mia is with me. She is my responsibility.”

  Grim faces stare at us as I clutch tighter onto Alex’s shirt.

  “Do you understand?” His tone sends a shiver down my spine. It’s like he’s claiming me as his, and for a second, that makes me feel safe.

  They all nod, smiles fading as he pulls rank, and I exhale slowly.

  Chapter Five

  Alex

  I don’t know why I’m so protective over this girl, but I know it’s making the others uneasy. I tell Mia to stay by my side as we eat, and when darkness falls, I watch as she lays up her traps for the night. She doesn’t recoil from me, which is progress, although she never turns her back to me either. She’s wary, and I want nothing more than to pull her into a hug when those sad eyes look in my direction.