Apocalyptic Romance

Chapter 1: My Story

Hi. My name is Eliza Belmont. I am sixteen years old, and I live in what you would call a 'broken home'. I mean LITERALLY a broken home. If a house in the middle of the woods that's swarming with zombies isn't a broken home, then I have NO IDEA what is. Ever since what I call the 'Zombie Virus' broke out, my family and I have been living in our old house or "Safety Bunker" as my dad calls it. I live here with just my dad, Bruce Belmont, and my little brother, Jack.

My mom passed away just before this virus broke out. If you ask me, personally I think that she's lucky. I'm not saying that I actually wanted her to die (which I didn't and I still don't) but I'm saying that she's lucky because she doesn't have to fight for her life, live in fear, and forage for food and other supplies everyday. That small list pretty much sums up my entire life right now.

Before all of this happened, my life was so much different. I used to hang out with my friends, go to the mall, have sleepovers, talk about boys, you know, teenage stuff. I still do those things though. Except in an alternative way. Here. Let me set an example sentence for you. 'I still hang out with my friends, but instead of them hugging me and saying "Hi", they try to eat me and they say something that sounds like a growl combined with them drowning in their own fluids.' I know. Gross. Here's another example. 'I still go to the mall, but only to look for food that isn't rotten and to find some clothes that haven't already been stained with years' worth of zombie blood.'

The world really stinks now. I mean it literally stinks. Imagine smelling nothing but rotting flesh, various fluids and mold everyday for the rest of your life. Go ahead, try. You can't? That's because you don't want to imagine something that horrible or because you have never smelled rotting flesh. (I wouldn't recommend it. It's a HORRIBLE stench that you can't forget!)

I know that my life has changed dramatically, there isn't a way of saying that it hasn't. Even though I live in a hell-hole, I still have the every-teenage girl's-dream; to find my one true love. It may sound corny, but before this, I kind of had that dream become a reality. He was a boy from school. I've had a crush on him since the third grade. One day, he came up to me and asked me if I wanted to meet up with him that Friday night, and I happily said "yes".

We went out to a nice restaurant, went dancing, and I had a nice night. The next week (after the virus had broken out) we went out again. He ran into me in town when I was getting supplies, we went on a walk through the city (for me it was more of a run) and after a little while, he tried to kiss me goodbye. But it wasn't as romantic as you think. I didn't want him to kiss me goodnight, so I plunged the end of a crowbar through his thick skull. This may sound like murder, but that crowbar was the only thing that kept me from getting infected with the virus. After I was done "breaking up" with him, I re-collected my things and I went back to the house.

The next week, it was a "family outing", meaning that we all had to leave the house to gather more supplies. My Dad always says, "The more hands, the more supplies" He may be right, but it also means less chances of the Belmont family surviving. Dad and I have gotten better when it comes to fighting and killing zombies, but Jack is only 14 years old. He wants to live as much as the rest of us do, but gets paralyzed with fear when a zombie is no more than 300 feet away. I feel bad for him, I really do. It's tough for a kid his age to go and kill something to save their own life for the first time. All he does is he screams for me or Dad and he just runs to us while this thing that wants to eat his face is running (or trudging) fast in his direction.

Both Dad and I try to teach him how to kill these things, but each time he holds the knife in his hand and has a zombie in front of him, he freezes up. Since there aren't people that make the target practice posters anymore, Dad and I have to improvise: First we go off into the woods and wait till we meet up with a zombie; then we catch it, and we shoot it in the neck with this special tranquilizer dart that makes it blind and completely unaware of it's surroundings; then we tie a rope around it's neck (as a leash so we can walk it to a certain destination).