The Awakening

6. Secrets Revealed.

Feasting on the remains of a person (or people it's hard to tell) is a blood covered face. The movement of my foot disturbs the face, It's one of The Infected. The Infected lifts its head and reaches towards my foot with its teeth. I panic, the stress of seeing my families remains earlier has compromised my ability to think clearly, but luckily George steps in and hits The Infected hard in its skull forcing its head backwards and snapping its spinal cord. I look at George thankfully and he just nods accepting my unspoken thank you.

"What is this place?" George enquires. "My family were kind of doomsday preppers; they made this bunker and filled it with supplies incase anything happened, they just wanted to keep us safe" I confess. "Is this your family too?" George asks as he points to the remains that lay on the floor. "No, they're the ones who killed my family" I say angrily.

"What...what happened here?" George enquires with a serious expression. Now I'm going to have to tell them the whole story, I haven't told anyone. I didn't want to have to tell anyone I don't know if I can relive it again. "It's a long story" I say out loud. "It's okay we have time" George quickly replies back to my attempt at leading him off the subject. "I'll tell you about it when we know there's no more of them" I say as I point to the recently killed body of The Infected. "Okay" George agrees.

We throughly search the not so secret bunker to check that it is clear from danger. Everything seems to be okay I don't think anymore of The Infected are in here. We should still check the rest of the house to make sure that there are no others around, I think to myself. "Let's check the rest of the house together" I suggest to George and Cindy. "Okay" George agrees. We walk back out the way we came and back into the dining room that the bookcase sits in. I look around cautiously, I'm a little less confident than I usually am, the events of today have given me a reality check. I'm not invincible, and neither are the others we need to stay together as a group, I don't think I could survive alone anymore I've got used to having company again, it's made me weak.

The dining room is clear, I can't see any of The Infected in here. "Let's check the next room" I suggest. George silently follows me. The next room is the kitchen which leads off the hall. The kitchen is large and continues the modern theme. There is an island in the middle of the kitchen which gives a luxurious feel to the room even while hidden amongst a pile of dirty dishes.

Once I know the room is clear I begin to relax a little more. "Excuse the mess" I joke pointing towards the huge pile of dishes. There wasn't much time to wash dishes here, we were too close to the city so we gathered our essentials and headed into the secret bunker that we had been preparing for years. "Downstairs is clear, we should check upstairs" George suggests. I show them the way to the stairs which occupy the main hallway. They would have seen them when they arrived through the front door, but I lead the way anyway. I walk slowly up the stairs attempting not to make any noise, I don't want to disturb anything that may be up there.

I head straight towards where my old room used to be, my private space. I walk in the door cautiously and to my surprise it appears untouched, just the way I left it I mean, anyway. The floor is filled with clothes, my clothes. I was always a bit messy but hey who isn't, it's comforting to have a glimpse of my old life it makes me feel that once I was human. My bedroom walls are still filled with posters from my favourite bands: Green day, Fall out boy, Hollywood Ending. I wonder what happened to them, did they survive. Probably, they had lots of money so they probably bought themselves a plane ticket to some secret place where all the rich and famous go if any disaster were to happen.

I sit on my unmade bed and look around the room at all the stuff I once owned when something catches my eye. I walk towards the dressing tables and pick up the photo that is siting on it. I stare at the young blonde women holding a small child "is that you, did you dye your hair?" George asks. "No, I'm the child and that's my mother" I say as I point to the young woman in the photograph. "Wow you look just like her, minus the hair colour I mean, but the facial features are identical" George replies. I smile at George, then the burst of happiness fades and I know now is the time to tell them what happened. "Okay, the house appears empty, I think it's safe for me to tell you what happened now" I say reluctantly. George and Cindy both sit on my bed next to me on either side and look at me with intrigued eyes.

"Like I said earlier, my family were doomsday preppers, we kept it secret because we knew people would think we were weird, plus it was safer that way. For years we had been collecting tinned food and filling containers with water, we had everything we needed to survive for a good few years at least, or so we thought. When the outbreak of the virus started spreading through the city we knew it was time to finally use the bunker, we had been preparing for this moment for years. A couple of months after the outbreak, my father began feeling unwell, he had developed an infection in his foot after dropping something on it. This is when my mother and I decided we needed to go and try find some antibiotics to help fight the infection. The obvious place to look for them was the pharmacy, so we tried there first. That place had been looted weeks before and there was nothing important left."

"Then I remembered that one of our good friends was sick for awhile and had collected a stash of different medical supplies, the only catch was that this was in their house which was a good walk away. When we made the trip we discovered that they too had survived. They were really close to us so they invited us into their hideout that they had created inside their house and offered us some antibiotics and other medical supplies, which they told us would help. They looked terrified, they had barricaded themselves inside their family home but it wasn't the most secure place. That's when we made the fatal error. We thought we could trust them, we had been friends for years. Anna was my childhood friend and our parents knew each other way before that, they too went to school together. We told them about our bunker and we told them how long we had been prepping. they were amazed, they kept telling us how they wish they'd thought of that and how we were lucky. They cried. They told us they wouldn't survive much longer and we believed them."

"We took them back to our home, we give them a change of clothes, food and water, everything that they needed to survive. We told them that they could stay with us, that they would be safe here. Everything was going fine; we had food, water and someone to talk to, but supplies started getting low and that's when everything changed. At first there were subtle changes, like Andrew, Anna's dad, started getting agitated. We thought it was the stress of the outbreak, we didn't think that it was relevant at the time. If only I knew then what I do now, maybe things would be different, maybe I'd still have a family. "