Life After Death

Prologue

I was 14 when the world ended.

Older than some, younger than most.

It happened all so quick that I barely had any time to think it was anything so sinister. I was more concerned about what would happen when my parents found out about my grades than them turning into zombies. After all, I kept being told that zombies weren't real, never would be.

Even when schools were shut down, I celebrated at the idea of two weeks off. It was a young mistake to be so naïve.

First off, people began to feel ill. Everybody first thought it to be this year's strand of the flu that was making its way around town, but it quickly became more apparent it was harsher than that. The elderly suffered the most, and the quickest, as they would anything, but the speed in which they filled up the hospitals just wreaked havoc a week or so later when those beds were needed for everyone.

The news stations quickly made sure it had informed us that this wasn't just local, or national, but global. Whatever this was, it was strange, unseen, and travelled quicker than anything that had ever been studied to good measure. Those with nothing better to do began to make conspiracies. But these conspiracies caused panic and people began to believe they had some truth behind them.

'Clearly this is all just a biological war.'

'There is no way this is natural; it must be man-made.'

And people believed them. They caused enough hysteria among people begging for some kind of answer, that the governments were forced to take action.

No one admitted guilt. A few said nothing.

A week later, when the casualties were racking up, answers were demanded. They needed someone to blame, for mother nature herself could surely not be this cruel.

No matter what anyone was given, or any procedures they underwent, it changed nothing. They died all the same.

It wasn't long till the government fell. Of every country. And along with the government, so did morals, justice, and reasoning. It became a free for all. Each man for himself.

Those that took their places were even more desperate to control the contamination- people like me were still infection free. Major cities which were rife with it, were in some cases attacked and invaded by rogue military officials.

It wasn't so much a war as it was complete annihilation. Each country blamed another. With nothing left to lose, they did all they could. 

It was a cruel death I watched my parents endure. The first day was no more than that of a common cold. And then just like that the pain, tearing and bleeding began. Slowly, some of their senses were lost- hearing being the first- then blood began to pool out their ears, and mouth too.

Their skin became irritated and red, and they scratched away at it bringing both relief and exquisite pain. But in time, and pure savageness, they gradually ripped the skin from their bones.

Somehow, I could cope with this. It was traumatic and made me want to gouge my own eyes out, yes, but I didn't have time to comprehend my grief. I needed to protect my sister- Amalie. She was only just six years old, and with our parents now gone, we had to flee and get away from any area we ourselves could become contaminated.

It was too late.

We made it three miles away from the house before I finally accepted defeat. There was no hiding from the fact she had whatever this disease or infection was.

I had never seen her look so scared as I did the first time she saw the blood she choked up.

I wanted to cry, scream, kill. But I couldn't. All I could do was wait for my little sister to die and try and keep her from being as scared as she was. It was a hard job considering how scared I was.

How are you supposed to give hope and comfort to someone when you do not believe or feel it yourself?

I took her back home. Perhaps the smell was not so flowery, but at least she had her own bed. Her own toys. Her own teddy bears. Her own room. I could not provide anything more than that, it was too late. And nowhere else was any safer anyway.

Each night she cried, sobbed. Refusing to sleep, scared she would not wake up again, but no matter how much she refused and fought, there wasn't any hiding from her own exhaustion.

I had hoped maybe she would die in her sleep, snuggled in her Cinderella duvets with her favourite bear in her arms- but mainly, peacefully.

Instead, she died, four days later, drowning in her own blood, exhaustion and sweat. Her eyesight had perished, the sockets filled with blood. Something that had not happened to my parents, they had managed to preserve their sight.

Her screams turned to gurgles until even they were no more. I don't know if she could hear me, in my desperate attempt to comfort her, or whether that too had been too far damaged.

I like to think she heard me, that the last thing she heard had not been my scream as i walked in on her.

And that day, the day Amalie White died, I think I died too.