Element Z

Chapter 9: The Blue Dot

The light was beaming on my eyes as I quickly opened them wondering if it was a dream and I was just late for work, but to my demise the light was from one of many spotlights pointed at us as we stood outside a walled city. It was hard to make out how many people were standing on it staring down at us but there had to be at least a hundred of them, as Zach approached me a man spoke over a speaker. "Andddd here's a showdown to show what happens when you dare defy the President. Get this folks, these three dared threaten the President's life when they were accepted into our sanctuary safe from the infected!" It felt like the world was against us in that moment, so many people booing us at once. How the hell could they be okay with sitting by while half of the human race perished?

Zach and Ethan pulled me as they ran and then I heard it, the growl of the infected. Looking around frantically I saw them clear as day, making their way towards us at inhumane speeds. In this moment I could only think of the intern I saved, he was on the ground he has given up. He had accepted dying to the infected because he didn't see any hope on the horizon, and after coming this far I think I see what he saw. There is no end to this hell, the virus will consume all of humanity and even if we wanted to there is no stopping it. The growls only got louder as Ethan's dog ran off, the poor little thing had to be petrified by what it saw. There is no turning the infected back to human, their lives are lost. Even if we could remove the virus, their organs have been devoured.

"Jake, pull yourself together!" Felt like the last words I would hear as I tripped over a rock and the two lost my grip. I looked up at them, Ethan trying to hold Zach back and that's when I realized the situation I was in. Turning around, there stood an infected dripping black liquid and lunging at me. Closing my eyes I decided to accept my fate, there was nowhere to run and nowhere we could hide. Everything got so quiet as I heard my heart beat slowly, each beat was like the sound of a bell. Echoing in my ear before I heard Zach yell. Opening my eyes I stared in disbelief as Zach stood over me, his arm in the mouth of the infected. Ethan charged shoving a stick through the infected's eye managing to pierce it's head, killing it. As the infected's lifeless body fell to the ground, Ethan helped me up as we saw Zach's arm bleeding.

Everything went back to normal speed as Ethan pulled me away, tears streaming down my face as I tried to get to Zach and hug him one last time while he was Zach. "Cut it out, Jake. He's going to turn into one of them, if you don't want to kill him. We have to get out of here!" Every memory I had of Zach flashed before my eyes, meeting him at the bar, celebrating getting the job, finding him at the hospital, I cried as I fought out of Ethan's grip. I tried embracing death and as a result Zach was bitten by an infected, there was no way I could accept a world without him. Wrapping my arms around him I hugged him tightly as I cried out, about five minutes passed before I opened my eyes and looked up. Why didn't he eat me? "Holy shit." Ethan said as he came closer. I couldn't tell if it was a dream or not, but Zach was still human. He didn't turn into an infected.

Grabbing our arms Zach pulled Ethan and I along as we ran away from the walled 'sanctuary". The spotlights didn't follow us, as the President shouted over the speaker. "Congrats you survived, we'll let you run for now. But when it turns midnight, we're coming for you three." He laughed like the deranged lunatic he was, after hours of running we stopped near a gas station. Taking a moment to catch our breath I hugged Zach tightly as a few tears went down my face. "Wh-what were you thinking?" Sniffling I looked up at him just smiling at me as he ran his hand through my hair. "There's no way I'm going to let you die, not after you came to save me from the hospital. If you're going to risk your life for mine, I'll return the favor." Ethan drank some water before walking over to us. "So how come you didn't turn?"

After he walked to a table and sat down, we followed him taking a seat as well. "Jake I know you're going to hate me, so I'm sorry. But I lied twice, more so I didn't speak the truth when the CEO lied to both of you on the helicopter." Ethan hit the table in anger, it felt as if our roles swapped because I was just happy Zach was alive. "You keep lying, what are you trying to hide from us?" Zach sighed as he looked Ethan in the eyes. "Like I said, I lied once. The other time I just didn't speak up or try to stop the CEO from lying. At the time I was confused and not sure if we'd gotten different letters, before I could piece it together Jake got angry. I was worried about that anger, so I didn't get a chance to say anything because he then left us. I did plan to tell you guys though, I promise. Because once he told us he was the CEO that's when I realized he lied." Ethan sighed as he felt his pocket thinking about the document he swiped from the President. "Adding on, when we were with the President and CEO I began to have second thoughts. The letter I received said that only a few people which included me got the cure, and that they wanted us to save the world. But the CEO seemed like the opposite of that letter, so I wasn't sure if the letter was true."

Ethan looked around and then back at Zach. "When did you get the cure, then? Feels like you knew about the outbreak before it started." My eyes widened as Ethan beat my thoughts to it, I stared Zach in the eyes unsure if he was telling the truth or not. I waited to hear what he was going to say, wondering if this is where he would say he knew all along it was going to happen. "I got it on Monday, shortly after waking up this strange nurse without an id gave me the shot and walked out without explaining it to me. I only realized I had the cure when we got to my house and I found the red file." I sighed in relief, feeling like I could trust Zach again. Before I could speak a noise behind me in the bushes caught our attention as we stood up and slowly approached. Ethan picked up a branch getting ready to swing. As we stood near the bush, the rustling stopped and out jumped Blake as he ran to Ethan barking happily.

We all chuckled as Ethan picked him up hugging his little German Sheppard he hadn't seen since we fled the walled town. "Well at least something good happened today," Ethan said with a silly smile on his face as he put the dog back in his duffle bag. "Alright, we should get a move on, because if they're coming for us at midnight then we need to find somewhere we can hide," Zach said as he picked up his stuff and began walking. Following behind we looked around trying to find a place we could stay, and then I saw a barn in the distance. "Let's stay over there." Making our way to the barn we felt that same uneasy peace from the city at night, there were no infected around us. After a few minutes, we arrived and walked inside setting our stuff down. "Wait a minute, there's stuff here. I think someone lives here." Ethan said as we felt uneasy, looking around to see if the owner was watching us.