Sam is asleep in the bed. I wake her up. She rolls over.
"How are you?" I ask.
"Not great. My leg is killing me," she says.
Sarah hands me a bottle of aspirin. I give one to Sam. Sarah calls me over. We step outside of the room. I shut the door.
"She's getting worse," Sarah says.
"Don't you think I know that?" I snap.
"We need to do something. I'm not saying leave her, but we need to do something," she says.
"What if we go back? It'd be easier then going forward. We can get her back to my camp," I say.
"We went through hell to get here. We could stay where we are for a while. Wait until she's healed," Sarah says.
I don't like that either. All of our options suck and there is nothing we can do about that.
"Just...let me think," I say.
I walk away. We need to go. The faster we get to that camp up north, the better off Sam will be. I remember seeing a wheel chair in the lobby. I grab it and bring it to her room.
"We're leaving," I say.
Sarah helps Sam into the wheel chair. We leave the hotel. I push Sam down the road. I look at the map. One day left until we arrive. After seven hours of walking all of us enter a house. Sam goes to bed early.
"I don't now how you did it today. If my sister was hurt like that, I wouldn't be able to think straight," Sarah says.
"You have a sister?" I ask.
"Had. She turned into one of those things," she says.
"It's hard...losing someone to the virus. One minute they are their normal selves and the next...they're gone. Dead inside and no matter how much you try they aren't going to come back," I say.
"Who did you lose?" she asks.
"My best friends. I was all alone after they died. They were like siblings to me. I grew up with them. They were all I had," I reply.
After our conversation ends, we go to sleep. I wake up earlier then the others. It's snowing outside. That's just what we need. A reason to go even slower. When Sam finally wakes up, I ask her how her ankle feels.
"It doesn't hurt anymore," Sam says. She stands up.
"Can you walk?" I ask.
She tests it out. She walks from the couch to the front door with no problem. We skip eating and just leave. Sarah unfolds a map.
"There is a shortcut ahead. Might save us quite a bit of time," she says.
"Then let's take it," I say.
She leads us through a small cave. On the other side is a large camp. We made it. A frozen lake is the only thing that stands between us and the camp. I step onto the ice. The ice seems to hold our weight.
I hear a gunshot. Sam stops. She slowly turns around. Her hands are holding a bleeding bullet wound on her stomach. She falls over. I flip her onto her back. Two men and one woman run toward us from the camp. I pull out my gun.
"Back away!" I yell.
"We want to help her," one of them says.
"You are the ones who shot her," I yell.
The woman charges at me. She tackles me to the ground. The gun is just a few feet from my hand. I reach for it. The woman pushes the gun farther away. I punch and kick, but she still doesn't move.
YOU ARE READING
The Dead Walk Among Us
Science FictionIt's been ten years since the fall of humanity. I was only ten years old when the zombies took over. The military told us to flee underground, explaining that it was safer. The zombies are smart, too smart. They can learn to hide themselves. Some of...
