Turned: Shattered Memories Of Yesterday

Chapter 6

We hit the road in our small car, It had been months since I felt so free. The sun shone bright and the car was heating up but that wasn't going to bring me down, we were finally out and alive. Zoe and Jason were both asleep in the car and the roads were pretty much empty except from the odd stranded car or a random corpses roaming the street. I didn't expect to find anything too close and the fuel looked alright for now even though I wanted to have spare gas if we found anywhere and had to get away. I was about to stop and have a break and stop the car when I saw something in the distance: a bus on its side with loads of the dead trying to climb up as a man took them off with an axe quickly chopping them up like nothing.

I woke Zoe to show her because I thought this guy looked safe and if he tried anything we'd turn right around and go a different direction. It took him a while to take all of the infected out but he did it perfectly so all that was left was bodies dead on the floor and bloodstains on his shirt, I waited for him to be done before slowly driving the car towards him. I could tell he was surprised to see people by the way he dropped his axe onto the bus and started frantically waving his hands towards up signaling that he saw us.

I went up to right in front of the bus just right near the bodies were and stepped out of the car where the man Jumped down off the bus right in front of me, He had dark skin and short black hair and a small goatee.

"My name's Andre" He said as he put his hand out for me to shake.

"I'm David" I say as I shake his hand "This is my wife Zoe and in the car is my son Jason"

"Well if you need somewhere to stay then up the road we have my family farm, right in the middle of a forest right where there's hardly any of the dead" He explains "My sister, brother and the people who used to own the farm are there at the moment, we have our own cows for food and milk and at some points it makes you think there isn't even a endless battle with the dead going on"

I almost go to hug him, It sounded so good. I look at Zoe and she smiled like she was feeling the same, we could have Just found our new home. Andre showed us a narrow path with a gate at the end which we could drive up to get to the farm but just as we were about to go in he warned us that we can't just leave in the middle of the day and that we must make it clear to people that we're going somewhere so they won't think we've gone missing.

As we pulled up the the house and finally saw what we were waiting for all my expectations of this doubled, It was amazing; it had white wood paneling all across the walls, there was two decks (one with some guy smoking a pipe), it looked like it had at least 5 bedroom from the number of windows on the second floor, a whole barn for the animals and it seemed peaceful, for the first time in months something seemed peaceful.

As the car pulled up to a small spot of land we could already see that there was others who were very surprised by seeing new people as most of them dropped their stuff and started walking towards us. The first one to get to us was a woman, she had short white hair, was very short and looked to be in her fifties.

"Who are you?" She asked in a surprised voice as if she thought everyone else in the world was dead (which was partly true.)

"I'm Zoe, this is my husband David and our ten year old son Jason"

See looked at us with a smile not saying anything, just staring at us with amazement "You must have come from the city, how the hell did you survive?"

So we sat down with her where she told us her name: Lily, and we told her our story while others rushed to get to know us like they was desperate for some type of contact with other people than themselves. There were four people sat around us, Lily and her husband Joe (who was the one smoking the pipe), Mark; their son who was about the same age as me and Joanne who was Andres sister. They were intrigued by how I escaped the bandits and how we set up the cameras with hardly any electricity but I think what got them most was how we survived in the city even with all the chaos which happened in the shadows.

By the time we had all exchanged stories the sun was starting to set and what seemed like a warm afternoon quickly changed into the dark night. I was beginning to feel at home, the people were nice and it seemed safe. Andre started to walk back from the road, he had been out there for hours. Joanne looked at him with a concerned face which we could all see.

"What took you so long?" She asked

"I was just taking care of the bodies, as I usually do"

"But it doesn't usually take you hours, what were you doing?"

He looked at us not knowing what to say next, even we had no idea where he was because all we saw of him was what he said he was doing. "Look it's getting late, hopefully somebody told Phil that we got new people so he makes some extra steaks".

Suddenly everybody goes silent, we all look at each other as we knew that nobody even thought about that as we were busy talking about our survival.

"We have some food in our car, we can have some of that tonight and the other stuff you can have to make more meals in the future" I say

"So you're staying?" Mark asks happily

"Well as long as your happy to have us we will stay and help with whatever jobs you need" I say before going back up the small hill to fetch our food for the evening. When I got back down everyone was getting into the house ready to eat tea. We all sat around a big table which could seat up to ten people and the food was served up, The steak looked delicious; Phil (who made the dinner) was probably a chef before this because it looked like restaurant quality food. He looked surprised to see us but carried on serving everyone before talking to us.

"before we start eating I would like to welcome David, Zoe and Jason to our house, they found themselves here today after a struggle in the city and deciding to find somewhere safe, and we're glad they found it" Joe began "And because of this I would like to donate my dinner to one of them as we eat here every day and they struggled to feed themselves for so long"

I was so surprised by Joe's act of kindness that I nearly went to hug him. "Thank you so much" I say as he handed it over, Just as I was about to split it into thirds so that Me, Zoe and Jason could all have some Phil spoke up as well:

"I also would like to give my dinner to this family to welcome into our home".

"You don't have to, trust me we can share" I say

"Nonsense" He laughs "This is a welcome into a new safe life".

We all ate our food (I shared with Jason but it was still the biggest meal we had in months) then it looked like everyone was going to sleep because after ten there's a 'big rule' about usage of electricity and light. So we went upstairs where we were shown to a room with a double bed and a small mattress on the floor for Jason.

"how do you power this place? The electricity went out months ago" I asked Joe as I was about to shut the door.

"About a year before this; my son Mark persuaded me to buy solar panels for the farm telling me their the most useful thing I would ever buy and you know what if it wasn't for him saying that we would have the luxury's we have today"

I shut the door knowing that this was the place we needed to be at, nobody knew what was coming in life anymore but we now know one thing. If we do ever have problems again, we have more now; we are not only people now.

We are survivors.