America. Summer of 2023. I think. It feels just like yesterday that my brother Ike and I were able to just walk along the beach, hit on the girls relentlessly, and eventually get smacked for being "pervs". But thanks to this wonderful nation, Europe, the Arab nations, and North Korea, we can't exactly do any of those things anymore, especially the girls part because those girls are dead now. Thanks to those countries, nuclear warfare broke out and wiped out everything, even Hersey, Pennsylvania, the magical land of milk chocolate, and turned everybody exposed to the radiation into blood thirsty zombies, assuming that they weren't horribly scorched or turned to ashes by the atom bombs. My brother and I were lucky though. We hid in the attic, my room, of our parents' house where we dressed up in these really cool looking goverment-edition hazmat suits because mom and pop worked for the FBI. I felt like one of those lucky-ass astronauts that were lucky enough to go to the moon colony when the war broke out. It was nice to pretend, but now there's no time for fantasies because of the whole fight-for-survival thing. Seriously, it's a buzzkill.
My name is Gabe, I'm a nineteen-year-old college student. Well, not really anymore because my campus doesn't exsist anymore. That and I might have dropped out. I'm not exactly the smartest person alive or at least of what's left. I have shaggy blonde hair and am about 5'11". I'm traveling with my fifteen-year-old brother Ike who's about 5'8" with short brown hair. For a guy like him, he's pretty ballsy and smart. I've never told him, but I'm glad I have him around to have my back.
Anyway, I look out into the desolate plain that was once the Everglades. Well, the Everglades was always a desolate plain, but now the water is completely evaporated because of the heat of the bombs and all that good stuff. This is actually more of a safe haven for my brother and I because there are almost no zombies around, even if there is a little radiation. I take a look at the supply of dry food and bottles of water we took from my room back in Miami and think of how hard it would be for a stoner with a case of the munchies to not eat all these reserves. Ike, holding his shot gun close to his chest, keeps a careful eye out any crazed zombies. He hasn't exactly been the same since he had to shoot mom and pop down because they tried to eat us in their little zombie nerd rage. I wonder why. I hold my Swiss Army knife close at my side too, just in case we come across dinner.
"Gabe," he says, "Where should we set camp? The sun is starting to set, that means the zombies will be on the hunt and become stonger."
"Chill your nips, bro," I say trying to calm him down, "We'll be all right here. We'll just walk a few more steps and then we'll set up camp. Okay?"
"....fine."
We take not even five more steps when I say, "Okay, we can set up camp now. You make the sleeping space and I'll just sit here and uh... think about stuff."
He grunts at me as I sit on a nearby rock. He starts to grumble something, but I just assume it's something about me being the bestest brother ever for letting him do all the hard stuff while I get to practically sacrifice myself by just lounging around like a growth on an old man's back. "Thanks for remembering my birthday, asshole!" he spits.
"Oh fuck!" I yell shocked, "Happy birthday bro! Happy sixteenth!" At least I remembered how old he is now.
"I'm fifteen, dibshit."
Or not.
"How could you not even remember my own birthday and age?! I remember your's!" he bitches.
"Oh yeah, prove it? How old am I?"
"Nineteen. You're gonna be twenty on December 17 at precisely 1:23 in the afternoon."
Fuck. He was right.
I don't say anything, all I do is reach into my pocket, pull out my knife and hand it over to him.
