The Summer Anthology ✔

Story #30- Nightly

Written by user blackrosedrop

Running. Everything starts with running. James and Liv and me, the three of us against the world.

They'd told us to wait; the rescue is going to take place in the courtyard. They'll only wait for a few minutes, hovering over the ground, the sound of the blades thrashing across the sky will draw ever Biter for miles, but that's not a problem. Our rescuers will be from the military, from a section that somehow managed to create order in the initial outbreak. They deal with those things on a daily basis, they'll know how to handle them. They'll have guns. More than the flimsy knife in my pocket.

The rescue plan seemed good enough, until Mr Peters left us.

He has the radio, you see, the radio that is perhaps the only connection in the world we have to our rescuers. Mr Peters told us he'll try to get a better signal by going into the tower block, climbing up onto the third floor. That was ten minutes ago and he hasn't come back.

"He's ditched us," James muttered as we waited inside the classroom. "He's taken it, and he's gotten out of here, leaving us to rot."

Still we waited, until we heard the unmistakable growl of a helicopter cutting directly over the school building. Our rescuers had arrived, and that was a fact, but only a temporary one. Mr Peters on the other hand had as good as abandoned us, and he may be on the helicopter right this second, radio in his hand. Maybe he had planned the whole thing in advance and the time he knew we wouldn't make it, that we'd die in our hope.

It was that, or the Biters have gotten into the school somehow and he's laying dead somewhere, blood oozing out of his neck, making a mess on the floor.

Running was his mistake; I won't make it ours.

The three of us, we're getting out of this dark pit, we're going to survive one way or another and most definitely we are going to get onto that helicopter. It can't leave without us, not when it's our only chance of finding civilisation again.

Now we're running in the darkness, coordinating by pure memory of the last six weeks we've been trapped here. The whites of Jess' eyes flash as she looks behind us, staring at the blackness in pure terror like any moment she'll see a Biter there, sharp teeth glinting in the dark.

We waited and waited but no help came. So here we run, through the shadows, through the earliest part of the night, and I know we'll make it because we have to.

The blood pumps through my ears, filling me with a sense of pure surrealism. It's like this isn't happening, like we're running in a nightmare and at any moment we'll wake up. I'm still convinced the last few months have been just that, a bad dream, but this time we're stuck inside of it and there's no way out.

Nobody is saying a word, but I know we're all straining to hear, soaked in a cold, feverish sweat, just waiting for the helicopters to leave us here in the dark. Then the Biters will tear us apart.

We run this time, not for the athletics team, or for a late class, we run for our lives. There's no telling how much time we have left before they break inside.

I look to my left where James is murmuring something between breaths, his chest rising and falling, puffs of steam coughing from his mouth. He's dressed in only the rags of his old school blazer since all the other clothes were too small for him. Me and Jess had managed to salvage some old scraps of jeans and sweaters.

James is so focused as he runs, his eyes set dead ahead - like he can see through the dark in the corridors. He doesn't look scared but I know he must be, because if he isn't, he's not human.