If We Survive

Chapter 1

I'm on the ground. I don't remeber falling over. Something large and feathery lands on my face. Hard. It rolls off, and I pick it up, staring. It's a bird. A very dead bird. I wipe my bleeding nose, standing up slowly. I can't see the expidition ahead, but they surly felt the tremor. 

I hear a short-lived scream, and I run up the remaining hill to see all of them- fallen over. One of the boys- Zack, I think his name is, is peeling himself off of the ground, slowly. I can see everybody else stirring slowly, graoning. 

"What the hell was that?" I hear someone ask Joe, the leader. Joe isn't moving. 

"Joe? Joe!" It's Katelyn, one of the CITs. She was at the front of the pack, just a few feet away from Joe. "He doesn't have a pulse!" She squeals. I freeze in place. Dead? Joe? We all freeze in that moment, and then Katelyn goes crazy. And when I say crazy, I mean freaking insane. 

"Eeeeaaaahh!" She screams, and bites into Joe's neck, which froze me solid. 

At that point, I just start running. I'm pretty damn good at running, if I do say so myself, and I do. I slip down the mountian, tumbling t my sprinting pace. I can hear somebody behind me, tumbling right on down. WHat just happened? Has sleep depervation finally gotten to my head? At camp you get like a total of three hours of sleep a night, and it doesn't pay off for somebody who is used to ten.

Something in my head tell me that this is real. I check my watch, calculating the time it'll take me to get back to the parking lot. My watch is blank.

It used to be my older brothers' that old watch. It was a Christmas preasent back like five years ago, and I stole it from him when he refused to wear it. That watch and I have been through a lot together. 

I can't see any dinks or cracks or scratches, like I fell on it, and I changed the battery a month ago. I check my cell phone, which shouldn't have service anyway, this high in the mountians, but it's dead. What the hell?

You know how I said that swearing bothers me? Well, I think it's appropriate in this situation.

"What the fuck." I say, turning my slim iPhone over and over in my hands. I paid two hundred dollers for that fucker right there. 

"That pretty much sums it up, yeah." Says a voice from behind me. It's Stephen, Zack's twin brother. His sunglasses are partially shattered in the frount. 

They're those annoying, cocky glasses that xc runners wear. They used to tick me off a lot. 

I put my hands on top of my head, panting. It's a two-hour hike back to the cars, but will those work? I could be some sort of EMP thing, but would that knock out the cars? I think it would. But how could that kill Joe and make Katelyn go crazy? Could it be some sort of attack? My brain snaps back to the news last week. Could it be an act of terrorisem? The Air Force Acadmy isn't far from here, so that could be the intended target. 

But what would we do once we got back to the cars? Camp was fifty miles from the parking lot, which wasn't far in a car, but walking? 

"What do you think we should do?" I ask, turing to Stephen. 

He shrugs. "If this is bigger than just the mountians..." He pauses, "it'll be hell out there."

"But if we stay here," I reason, "we'll need the supplies in the car. I only have one bottle of water, and my lunch, which isn't enough for even a week out here."

"Then let's-" Pounding down the mountian is Zack, yelling something.

"GOOOOO!!!" 

That's enough for me- I go running after him, tripping over my own feet, and somehow keeping my footing. 

In five minutes, we're nearing the first parking lot, and I get a feeling. It's nothing supernatural, but sometimes I just know when bad mumbo-jumbo is going down. Like right now. 

I don't stop them, though. I just keep going. When we arrive, it's quiet. I move twards the van- two groups set out to climb the mountian- the fast kids, and the slow kids. I was with the fast ones.

I pick the lock on the back of the van, chewing on my lip in the eerie silence. As soon as the trunk pops open, I expect to hear an alarm- which doesn't happen. 

There's some assorted supplied in there, including the huge medi pack and some water bottles. I find some purification tablets, which I shove into my bag. The medi pack is too big to carry around, so I just take out the ibiprophen and some bandages and band-aids. I can hear Stephen and Zack talking behind me. 

"Here," I say, tossing each of them three extra water bottles. 

"Any food?" Zack asks, eyeing the van. 

"Yeah, apples and cuties. Carry as many as you can." We all shove as much as we can into our bags. 

"You don't suppose we should try the other cars?" Stephen asks. 

"I don't think that's leagel." I reply bluntly. 

"I don't think it matters." Zack says, heading over to a green SUV. 

I shift a large parka over, to reveal my father's .45 in it's lether holster. My dad had his nine mil. in his backpack. I click out the magazine, eight rounds. I dig around the trunk aimlessly, searching for the extra rounds.

I find a box of fifty rounds, which I add to my already bulging backpack. 

I discard the holster, not sude how to attach to my belt loops, instead I place it into the waistband of my jeans. The metal feels cold against my skin. It feels strange, like we already know that we've gotten a front row seat to the world ending. 

And Stephen, Zack, and I are already working as a team.

"Hey! FOund some canned soup!" Hear Staphen shout from over a few cars. 

"Look for bigger backpacks for the three of us, will you?" I call over, spotting a rapidly expanding hole near the zipper. 

"Got it." Zack replies. I make sure that there is nothing left in the van that I can use- and aside from a small book of matches, there isn't. I feel bad for the next people to come through here- they'll be entirely out of luck.

I get tossed a large backpacking pack, which I stuff all of my things back in. 

The next car I come to has a rifle. I don't even know how to use the thing, which after a moment of inspection, I toss it to Stephen. "You know how to use the thing, right?" I vaugely remeber a Facebook photo of him with some poor animal. My parents never bothered to take me hunting, dispite my begging. 

"Yeah," He replies, examining it skepticly, then throwing it over his sholder.

I wonder, for a moment is this is a trap. It feels like we're getting way too luckey. Like how I'm not freaking the hell out right now, even though I've just seen Joe drop dead, and sixteen teenager turn into flesh-eating monsters, or the fact that we've found food and supplies and guns. 

"I think we should hightail it out of here," I say, slamming down the trunk of a 2002 Tarus. "We should head into to the woods, away from the trails. We'll cross a river in a day and a half, and two streams in the next three days." I repeat the information memorized from the map at the trailhead, six miles off. 

My brain does that sometimes, memorizes things out of the blue. I can remeber the exact feeling of the woman that handed me grocries six years ago. It's strange.