And Then There Was One

If time flies when you're having fun, it comes to a near complete stop when you're hiding from a band of murderers in a deserted police station. Which just so happens to be what I'm doing at the moment.

It all started around two months ago. One of the teachers from the local school was found dead, with a slit in his throat. A few days later, it was some barista from the coffee shop basically everyone frequented. The deaths happened with more and more frequency until it was not uncommon for there to be anywhere from two to five per day. That's why the police decided there was more than one killer going around. They were killed soon after that deduction. Other than that, there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the murders. Some were killed with knives, like the teacher. Others strangled.

The schools in our area closed after the murders reached one hundred. Locking yourself in your house and not even cracking open a window seems like a solid solution, doesn't it? Turns out not solid enough, if the death of my family is any proof for that.

That's how I got into this predicament. All of my friends' families were killed at some point during this nightmare, and we figured that there's safety in numbers. We each raided our pantries and some of the abandoned convenience stores for food and met up at the station. Our rationale was that there was ammunition there, and that going to a police station seems like something murderers wouldn't be very keen on doing.

The plan was to survive there for as long as possible until some sort of help finally arrived.

And that's how I find myself eating a stale cookie while my friend, Naomi, whines about the weather for what seems like the fifth time in the past three minutes.

"Like, all I'm saying is would it really kill somebody to turn the AC on?" She snivels, lying on the floor.

"In all likelihood, no. But do you really want to risk it? According to Arya's last grocery run it's a ghost town out there. Turning on the conditioner would be like sending out a signal of 'Hey, sitting ducks here!'" I explain with all of the patience I can muster. Which, to be honest, isn't much.

"Ducks? There aren't any ducks here... are there?" She sits up, interested, while I do my best not to facepalm.

"It's an expression, a figure of speech," I respond, and she wilts back down, disappointed that there are, in fact, no ducks around. Naomi may not be the sharpest crayon in the box but she can be pretty cool to just hang out with sometimes. When she isn't whiny, like she's being now.

"Hey, Chel, go join Zach at surveillance," Bryson orders as he walks in, probably for his breakfast break.

"On it," I respond and head over to the room. Bryson is probably one of the people I know the least here, but he doesn't seem too bad. Just a typical jock, all brawn no brains.

"Hey, Nerd," Zach greets me as I take my spot.

"'Sup, Geek," I respond. If Bryson is all brawn no brains, Zach is all brains no brawn. We've been friends since practically forever and there was no one else I would rather trust with my life, except maybe myself.

"No signs of them?" I ask, not having to clarify who "them" are. Few things dominate our thoughts anymore other than them.

"No, we seem to be in the clear," he responds.

"Or this is just the calm before the storm," I think anxiously, but don't say out loud. This whole ordeal has been taxing on all of us, and commenting on it won't make things any better. "Good to hear," I say instead.

When we would hang out before, there was hardly a moment of silence between us, whether it was discussing our favorite books, shows, subjects, or chatting about occurrences at school, or just talking about everything and nothing at the same time somehow. But now, the air is heavy with the silence of nothing to talk about. There's nothing to catch up on when almost all time is spent together I guess.