Silver Horizons (Silver Horizons #1)

Silver Horizons | 2

"Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature." – Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

 

I knew that it was the zombie apocalypse when the girl at the diner attacked us. Kyle knew it was the zombie apocalypse when . . . okay, well Kyle didn’t believe it was the zombie apocalypse no matter how many times I shouted it at him, telling him that there was no other explanation.

            As far as he knew, Mom just wanted us to drive to our family’s house so that they could get to the hospital for Dad’s wound on his arm. If only that was the truth.

            It was a few hours after we started off on the road, and we were surely in the middle of Oregon by then. There was nobody else on the road—seriously, where were all the people?—so it was fairly easy to make good time by driving.

            But the gas meter was glaring at me, and I knew that we had to stop. Luckily for us, we passed a diner with a gas station next to it. So we filled up on gas and then went into the diner to get some food.

            Except we didn’t exactly find the diner like we thought we were going to. Then again, what did we expect to find in the first place? Happy waitresses bustling around serving happy people? Yeah right. Not with how things were looking outside—no cars, no people, no nothing.

            Inside the diner, there was blood. There was a lot of blood. On the counters, on the tables, on the floor, there was blood. It was smeared just about everywhere, and I was sure that it was splattered onto the wall as if somebody’s blood had gushed up and jumped onto the white walls.

            “What the hell . . . ?” Kyle started to say but trailed off. “What happened in here?”

            “Like I know,” I replied. “It looks like a mass shooting just occurred.”

            “If that were true, then there would be police officers all around the place. There aren’t any police officers.”

            “No shit.”

            I decided to have a look around, so I walked to the counter and peered over. Behind the counter were two girls. They looked to be about my age—eighteen. The only difference between me and the girls was that I was alive and they appeared to not be. But if what happened with Mom and Dad earlier was anything to go by, I wasn’t sure if they were actually dead or if they were going to spring to live and pounce on Kyle and I.

            Turning my head to the right, I saw that there was another girl lying on the ground, blood pouring from her head. She was moving.

            “Help . . . “ she moaned, scraping against the floor. “Please help me . . . “

            Kyle came to stand beside me, and when he laid eyes on the girl, he whispered underneath his breath, “Oh my god.”

            I nodded my head. “’Oh my god’ is right.” I turned to look at him briefly. “Should we help her? I mean, call 911 or something?”

            “Um,” he said, sounding unsure, “if you haven’t noticed, there aren’t already police around here, so doesn’t that mean that there aren’t going to be police at all?”

            I shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.” Averting my attention back toward the girl wiggling around on the ground with the massive head injury, I noticed that she was looking up at me. Her eyes were the weirdest part about her, not counting for the blood dripping from her skull. Blood was crusted around her eyes, but there was still a bit oozing out. When she opened her mouth to say ‘help’ again, I cringed. Her teeth were yellow. How long had she been here?