The Last Seventeen: (Book 1) An Apocalypse Story

Chapter 15: Day three

Chapter 15: Day 4


Everyone was outside their cars now. At first they thought that it was something disastrous, like a psycho was spotted or someone was hurt but they got a fistful of reality when they saw two unmoving bodies in my own car. Everyone was hysterical. They thought that more people had died during the night.
"They aren't dead!" Andy shouted at everyone in the darkness. "They are just drugged, but alive." Andy turned to me and Bryce with accusation spelled in his eyes. "How the hell did this happen?"
Bryce and I looked at the ground at the time. It was embarrassing having to admit they were drugged because I had to go to the bathroom. We both kept silent and let the wondering eyes of our peers glare at us for an answer. Finally, Bryce spoke up.
"We left the car for a few minutes then we came back and saw that the doors were open. The psycho also left us a note." I was surprised by his answer. He completely left out the part of us watching Joanna and Chris. I guess even he knew it was a horrible time to say it.
"A note? Where did you find it?"
"On the backside car window." I answered him and slipped the note out of my pocket. "Here."
I gave Andy the note and he read it over and over again. His eyes remained emotionless but his hands shook a little bit.
"What does it say?" Cassidy asked in the crowd.
"Yeah, read it out loud." Caleb joined in.
Andy read it out loud as I watched the faces of everyone else. Their eyes grew wider with each word Andy read and their bodies didn't move as if they were frozen in place. I could hear some of them swallow their fear while others showed signs of tears. None of them have ever been this frightened before in their whole entire lives.
"What do we do then?" Darius spoke after a long deserved silence. "They know were here and they're getting ready to attack us. We need to do something."
Andy just shook his head and put his hand over his mouth. For the first time in his life, he had no idea what to do. He had two unconscious bodies, fourteen people scared to death of what could happen to them, and the enemy knowing where we all were. Andy slammed his hand on the car door and left a clear indention. I knew that wasn't his strength alone. The air was going to his brain. I don't know how much longer he could keep this all up.
He took a couple of deep long breaths then looked at us all in the eyes. "I have no idea." He said. Everyone was taken aback at his words. "We are being hunted. It seems like no matter what I do they are two steps ahead of us. I just don't know what to do anymore."
"Andy, don't do this." Kaitlin said to him. "We need you." She spoke in a soft but meaningful tone. She said what we were all thinking. Even if some of us didn't like the decisions he made or told us what to do, he still kept us alive and we needed someone like that. "We could die out here if you quit on us."
As I looked at her body and face, I could tell what she was doing. She believed in some of her words but others were just filler. She wanted to give Andy another thing to focus on, another goal to reach. It was working like a charm.
Andy was filled with determination again. His brain was working on a way to find out what we needed to do. He bounced back so quickly. I wished I had that trait in me.
"Everyone go back to the cars you were in before. Lock the doors and block the windows with anything you can find."
"That's the plan?" Ansley's heavenly voice spoke through the crowd. Obviously she didn't know about Chris's adventures. "We just go back to the same cars we were in and go back to sleep?"
"Tell me a better plan and I'll take it under consideration." Andy waited for a response. He glared at Ansley and after a couple of seconds she backed down. "Alright, then we do as I say. Everyone back to their cars and stay there until morning. "
No one fought back on his words and we all walked back to our cars. The thought of sleeping next to a girl who was drugged to unconsciousness was weird. I imagined it would be like sleeping next to dead body. She would be unmoving and unresponsive, but at least warm and breathing.
I reached for the door handle but felt Andy's stone grip enclose around my wrist. I looked up at him and his serious stare told me I wasn't getting anymore sleep for the rest of the night.
"Not you. You get to take watch tonight and make sure those lunatics don't try to slit our throats." He patted me on the shoulder and started to walk away from me like everything was okay.
"Just me?" My voice was shaky and filled with stutters. "All by myself? Are you insane? They'll kill me!"
"No, not just you. Chris is also going to watch the perimeter for anything that could harm us."
Chris spun on his heels with an open mouth expression imprinted on his face. His eyes were ten times as wide as they usually were. He was just as scared as I was.
"You aren't being serious, right? You're joking." Andy's blank expression answered Chris's question better than any words could. "You want me and Ryan to watch out for the psychos? Just us? No one else?
"Yeah, Ryan has the gun and you've gotten sleep." Chris's looked over to the side with guilt.
"Really?" I asked him.
Andy just nodded his head. He turned his body away from us and headed back to his car, leaving our words of disagreement to be taken by the wind.
We both stood there like idiots once we saw Andy to his place of sleep. We could have moved from our positions at any time but we both stayed. I'm not sure why Chris stayed though. He had his fake story of saving Ansley to wave in everyone's faces but, for me, I knew why I had to stay. I had to prove to everyone that I was useful and not someone who would shy away at the face of danger. I also had to show up Chris. If I went and he stayed, he would get all the glory while I would be left to be ridiculed and get untrustworthy feelings from the rest of the group.
We both didn't speak a word to each other. We both just bathed in the silence, listening closely to any sounds that sounded anything human.
"Hey, you want a swig?" Chris asked as he held out a bottle of whiskey.
I was surprised at the offer. Not at the fact that he actually some but that now was the time he would want to offer it. I was starting to get worried about him.
"No." I said to him flatly. What he was doing to Ansley was wrong. Very wrong, but it wasn't my place to say anything about it.
"Come on," he egged me on, "it's no fun getting drunk alone." I kept my face straight and uninterested.
"Please," he begged, "the only person whoever drinks with me is Jo and she is out of it." He paused for a few seconds then sat on the ground. "I really need to talk about some things. Can you at least listen?"
I rolled my eyes and put my back against his. At least this way we could watch all our sides and not get sneaked up on. I waited for him to start speaking. Maybe I could finally say what's been on my mind.
"Ryan, I have been lying to everyone." He took a swig of whiskey while I squirmed around uncomfortably. "Everyone here thinks it was me who went back into the bus heroically after Ansley but the truth is, it wasn't me who did it." Again I rolled my eyes but I was interested to see what he would do to fix it. "To be honest I wasn't around the bus when it exploded. I was off to the side where nobody else to could see me."
"Then why take the credit?" I asked him with a harsh tone.
I realized I had only suppressed my anger. I thought I was over the whole thing, but now that he was talking about it, I wanted to cut his tongue out and feed it to him. I took a few a deep breaths and took my hand away from the revolver for good measure.
"Well," he searched for his words carefully and also drew out the 'well', "you know what, forget it. Not like you were the guy who did it."
Chris laughed and hit me on the back. I felt my body taking in deeper and heavier breaths. I know it was me who had saved her. No one could even start to believe it me who risked my life to save someone
"And why couldn't it have been me?" I really wanted to know the answer.
Chris just laughed harder and I heard him slosh the alcohol in his cheeks. Every little thing he did started to annoy me.
"Well, I mean look you. You're small, scrawny, and you just don't look like the type who would do it." My hand kept reaching for the gun but I forced myself not to grab it. "Now Andy," he shook his finger to the wind, "Andy is the guy who would do that." He gasped. Obviously the alcohol was taking its toll on him. "Maybe it was him! Maybe he saved her!" He shouted and raised his bottle onto the air. "To Andy!" He slug down for a good three seconds then leaned back on me to support himself.
"You know, I think I know a secret about you." He slapped me on the shoulder and I wanted to slap him on the face. "You like Ansley."
He looked over his shoulder and my face lit up like a beacon. I know I told myself that I was over her and would stop thinking about it, but it just seems like every time I hear her name, I just can't help myself from turning red.
"I knew it!" He shouted right in my ear. He was really testing my patience. "Attention world! Ryan Sizemore likes Ansley Bowman A.K.A my girlfriend!" My body made me stand. "That is absolutely rich!"
I slowly turned around and clinched my fists by my side. I knew my body was taking in the gas. I could feel it affecting my brain, but I didn't care. I would be doing everyone here a favor if I took him out and threw him in the woods. All I would have to do is choke him death and watch his face turn blue as he thrashes in my stone cold grip and, after a while, would stop forever.
I grabbed Chris by the shirt and lifted him up off the ground and let him dangle in my grip. At first he was confused. He looked around frantically and kicked his legs around, surprised that they weren't touching ground.
I felt great. The air around me was like my own endless drug. It filtered throughout my whole body. It pumped into my heart, my muscles, my lungs, and especially into my brain. All this time I fought for this feeling to leave me, but now I wanted it to stay. I wanted to stay like this forever.
I was so caught up in my own feelings that I forgot about Chris. He thrashed and released himself from my grasp. He tried to run away back to Ansley. Of course to Ansley. He wanted to rub it in my face that it was him who had her. Not me. I made an animalistic roar and sprinted after him.
I was fast. I was so fast. I felt the cold air hit my face and my feet slap the ground second after second. My heart was beating so fast. Almost as fast as my feet. I was high off my drug and I wasn't coming down.
I leaped into the air and landed on Chris's back. He fell instantly and I got on top of him with a crazed smile on my face. Chris opened his mouth to scream but I didn't hear. My hearing wasn't working right. I couldn't hear any of the sounds around me. The only thing I could hear was my heart. Beat beat beat, one after another.
It annoyed me that his mouth was wide open. It wasn't right. I reached into the back of my pants and pulled out the revolver. I jammed the barrel into his mouth until it poked into his throat. I pulled back on the hammer with the same hand and, with the other hand, wrapped my fingers around his throat and squeezed. I didn't hear his shocked screams but his movements were all I needed to see. He thrashed and tried to get a grip on my own neck but it was useless. I could see his life fading from his eyes. It was the best sight I had seen. Being the dominant male and killing my lessors was so new to me. So amazing. So influential. So riveting.
Something hit me in the stomach and I rolled off of Chris. My gun skidded across the ground and underneath an abandoned mini-van.
The kick didn't hurt. I was impenetrable to pain, but the force of the kick is what threw me off. I got to my feet quickly and saw Joanna and Bryce together ready for a fight. I wasn't going to fight them though; my threat was Chris who was now being helped up by Bryce.
A ravenous smile came to me as I sprinted towards Chris. I could already feel his throat in my clutches again, waiting to be crushed. An arm came out of nowhere and clothes-lined me in the chest. I fell on my back and felt another person jump onto of me. It was Joanna. Her calm and also disappointed face spoke words clearly too where I could actually hear them. I listened but that didn't stop me from struggling.
"Ryan, stop. Calm down and take a few breaths. Stop this." Joanna had her hands on my wrist and tried to pin me down. "This isn't you. It's the air. Just stop."
I could see tears come into her eyes. Tears showed weakness. I had the upper-hand. I twisted my body and her grip loosened off of my wrists. I whipped my head back and caught her in the cheek. She stumbled backwards and held her hands over the pain. I got back on my feet and charged her. I grabbed her by the stomach and tackled her to the ground. We landed hard. Me on top of her.
I raised my fist into the air until another force hit me in the stomach. I floated in the air then landed hard. Bryce stood over me with a worried look on his face. He had never fought anyone before. He was an easy target. Like a helpless puppy in an alley with nowhere to go. I snickered to myself. He wasn't any type of threat. I stood up and grabbed him by the shirt. He struggled and kicked as I lifted him into the air and threw him across the street. He landed on the pavement and skidded as I laughed.
I looked around for Chris and found him under the mini-van. Idiot. He could have ran and lived but instead he wanted to stay and die. I sprinted towards him and slammed into the van. It tittered on its wheels but stood its feeble ground. My blow caused the side of it to sink into itself and caused the windows to break into pieces like jagged teeth. I slammed into again and watched as it collapsed onto its side. Chris lay on the ground helpless and scared. Just the way I felt when The Loon stood over me. It was great being on this side. It was overwhelmingly powerful.
I flipped him onto his back and saw him begging with soundless words. His eyes pleaded for his life but my mind told me he was a nuisance, a stupid and incompetent person. I turned from him and picked up the sharpest piece of glass I could find in the pile. It was perfect. It was like a jagged triangle with a sharp and pointed edge. Perfect for killing.
I turned back to him and found him trying to get up. I grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him back to me. I flipped him over again and put the glass to his neck. His veins were popping out of his neck. It was glorious. I smelled the air around me. It was a beautiful smell. It was full of blood, sweat, and tears. It was so potent I could taste it.
I ran the glass on his chest and over to his heart. I focused my hearing hard and even heard his heartbeat, or was it my own? Was he scared or was I? Doesn't matter. He needed to die. By my hand and only by my hand. I slowly sank the glass into his chest, centimeter by centimeter. I was so close, I could see blood seeping from the wound. It was getting all over my fingers. It was like an evening snack.
"Ryan!" The voice cut through the air around me and to my mind. "Stop it or the bullet goes straight for your head!" I looked towards the threat and saw Bryce staring down the sights of the revolver with his hands shaking like crazy. "Don't make me do it!"
I smiled at the thought. Nothing could beat me, especially Bryce.
I took a step forward and heard a sharp loud noise. Something hot grazed and cut my cheek. I was sent to the ground and the air around me turned normal. The pain hit me instantly and I sprawled on the ground. My drug was gone. The precious yet demented drug was flushed away. My one thing that made me dominant was taken away. My one power, gone.
My mind went back to normal. It went from killing machine to Ryan. Only then could I actually see what I was doing. I wanted to kill for the fun of it. I hurt my friends and almost killed someone. I was what I feared most. A psycho. I should've pulled the trigger back in the bar.
Through the feelings of pain and the darkness of something covering my mouth, nose and eyes, all I could think about was Chris. How the glass slid slowly into his chest. Even in my own mind, it felt good. But was he dead? Through the thin sheet of clothing, I saw his body on the ground, bleeding. People crouched over him and put pressure in his wound, but he wasn't moving.
My vision started to fade along with my heartbeat. My body, even living without the tainted air for so long, couldn't imagine living without it. I was headed for my demented mind of darkness and pain. I was swimming through my thoughts, disgusted by each and every one of them. Maybe this was my journey to hell.
I wasn't just a monster; I was a prisoner who deserved death. I just wanted to be free. Not of the binds that held me, but by the world itself. It was killing me slowly and I wasn't ready for it.