The Survivors

Chapter 9

After a good night's rest in the warm hut, Ashton and I set off at the crack of dawn. We didn't wake anyone up but Ryder, and I gave him the best areas to hunt and told and told him various places I had hidden supplies. He knew not to touch any of the things I had stored except for the weapons. The river had clean water, but if you drank too much you threw up. TJ and Cara slept peacefully underneath a thick fur, and I kissed each one's forehead. I actually felt like their mother now. Ronnie lay near them, her usual hard expression replaced with the innocence of sleep in a safe place. I hesitated but kissed her forehead too.

About three hours later I heard a pack of zombies. I whispered to Ashton and told him which way we'd go to avoid them. We both pulled out our pistols. Safety first. We snuck through the trees to our left. I heard running footsteps, and thinking it was Ryder with some emergency and he had finally caught up to us, I stopped. I signaled to Ashton to wait where he was and the footsteps got closer and closer until I saw a small kid run straight towards us, but it was too fast to be human, and it wasn't Cara or TJ. The smell of death and rotting flesh hit my nose and I gagged, then ran as fast as my body would allow towards Ashton, who had realized what I was doing and had begun to climb up the nearest tree. I vaulted myself up and onto a thick branch at the base of the tree and then continued with my rapid ascent. We both reached the top out of breath with three dozen very angry, very fast zombie children. Neither of us had ever seen something like this, and were scared as hell. I hated killing the little kids, because sometimes, the they die for good, I see the human come back in their eyes. And it makes me think. What if they're still human, but the disease causes them to be trapped inside themselves with no way to escape? I can't imagine it. I shake off the horrifying thought and focus on the situation at hand. As I tried to figure out we could get away without completely depleting our ammo supply, I noticed a few things. One, they all wore the same tattered mint green scrubs. Two, they were all kids, the youngest seemed about two and the oldest looked eleven. Three, I saw the Reconstruction brand on all of the kids' forearms. It's interlocking hammer and sword flashed through my mind as I struggled to fit the pieces together. We were running out of time. They had begun to tear at the tree we perched in, ripping off bark and smaller branches. I glanced at Ashton, who was staring down at the creatures with a defeated look on his face. Then suddenly, it hit me. Just as I opened my mouth to tell him my discovery, he turned quickly, cupped my face in his hands, and kissed me before I even had a chance to say anything. And for some reason I can't understand, I kissed him back. His lips were softer than I had expected. We tore apart after what seemed an eternity, breathing hard. "What was that for?" I whispered breathlessly. "Just in case we die today," he whispered back. With that he turned back to the kids underneath us and I remembered what I wanted to say before he muddled up all my thoughts. "I think these are the women's kids, the ones that the Snatchers catch. I think when the Reconstruction gets them knocked up, they mess with the women's bodies to make these kids special, but something must've gone wrong."

"Or maybe they sent them out here to kill off the rest of the survivors so they can have a clean slate when they try to repopulate the world," he mused to himself. "Either way, if my brothers are in anything to do with the Reconstruction I want them out." The Reconstruction had been trying to rehumanize the earth, and they weren't afraid to do nasty deeds to accomplish their goal. They sent out Snatchers to catch women to knock up and throw away like trash. Most of the time the women were already knocked up when they made it to the compound, thanks to a Snatcher doing what he liked with them. It made my blood boil to think about it.

"Amen to that," he muttered, then fired a shot into the crowd. They all scattered with ear piercing shrieks, except for the one Ashton had shot at. "Self preservation?" I asked him, disbelieving. He just shrugged and began to pick his way back down the tree. I followed and we approached the dead child. It convulsed violently for a few minutes until suddenly it lay still. Thinking it was dead, I knelt down to inspect it. "Mommy?" the kid croaked out. I gasped and jumped back.