Speechless

Chapter One

My heart was pounding, my head was spinning, and I was trembling. Almost so much I couldn't grab onto the lowest branch on a tree. "Aubrey! Go! They're gaining on us!" Pleaded Jason from behind me. This is the biggest herd of them that we have ever encountered. I climbed so fast I scurried up that tree like a squirrel with rabid dogs chasing after me. Jason must have felt the same way, because he surely looked like it. I got up to around the center of the tree and it was probably higher than I needed to go, but I didn't care. I sat on a thick and heavy branch and let my back lean against the trunk of the tree. Once Jason got up to where I was resting he did the same on the branch next to me. We looked down and saw the things trying to eat us down at the ground, not figuring out how to climb up this tree like how we did. They were reaching up the tree like they were trying to pick an apple that was too far out of their reach. Except replace the apple with us.

It was like a show. Except this was real, no tv separating the people watching and performing, and these are not actors. They truly want us dead. They want us like them. After we are done watching the horrid performance, we both look up at the sky, breathing heavily. The sky was the perfect shade of blue, the sun was shining as if to say, "Lucky me, I'm up here in Heaven and I guess Hell is rising from underground. Because I can see it from here, the demons coming for the angels that didn't make it here. Ha! That is Hell, and this Heaven. A separation between good and evil. And I guess you guys got stuck in between."

I look down, not bearing the taunting any longer. Jason still is looking up though; the sweat glistening off of his forehead and neck, his brown hair hanging loosely over a small portion if his forehead, and his black tattoo below his ear of a small lighting bolt shining with sweat as well. "Well," starts Jason, "that kinda sucked," I chuckle and he finally looks down at me, catching me gazing at him. I try to prevent myself from blushing but I can't. Jason smiles and it's contagious, I do the same, baring my plain white teeth. "I suppose we won't be going to a school for supplies again?" Asks Jason sarcastically.

"You suppose right," I answer. My throat burning as I speak.

"We still have a bag of supplies though," says Jason. He holds up his green backpack with most of the items keeping us alive inside. "What have these people become?" Asks Jason, finally approaching the question. I've been ignoring it because I don't want to talk about it. I know if I try to define my fear, I will show how terrified I am. I feel like the devil is always watching me, and I don't want him to know I am petrified of this, that only encourages him to keep them coming. That's my true fear, that this is real, that when I'm about to die I will really die, and not awake from a horrid nightmare. "I guess they are dead," I answer, now both of us looking back at them, not at each other.

"They don't act so dead to me. But they sure look like it," says Jason. I nod and do everything not to let my voice shake as I am about to speak.

"I know this, don't get bitten by one or you become one. I met someone else on the road, before encountering you, and they told me that these were people. They want you to join their army. If you get bitten, you change. If you get scratched and they draw blood, you change. They don't meet our needs though, they don't need food or water so survive. They eat flesh whenever it comes along. They hunt, I suppose. We are their prey. Even though these people are dumb, it's easy to get caught," I explain to him. The man I met before Jason has died now. But he was great. The way he looked at everything, it truly fascinated me. He once told me something I will never forget, "Death is something we must face. Even in these hopeless conditions, we want it to occur later rather than sooner. But it will happen. Now it's just a matter of it being peaceful and quiet or the last thing you hear are the satisfied moans of the dead and your own flesh being torn apart. This world is losing hope everyday, but we keep fighting. Even myself, but I can't explain why. Sometimes I think it would be better to die in the way I've always imagined and wanted, not the way the world has now wanted me to. Maybe I just don't want to seem like a coward, but that's a coward's way of explaining it, if you ask me,"

"What should we call them? We can't refer to them as "things" forever, you know," Says Jason, pulling me from the memory of the middle aged man I had encountered. His name was Jim. His name, so simple, but he was far from that.

After thinking for a minute or so, I responded, "The Gone. Or even The Goners works,"

"Why The Gone?" He asks, interested. He's looking at me now, but I'm looking at The Gone.

"Because that's what they are, gone. Even if they did come back, what life would they have? Most would probably kill themselves from guilt of killing people, even though they couldn't control themselves. But they are probably dead, they are just gone. We could call them The Goners because they were goners to begin with, never standing a chance since they are dead now. The Gone is short for Goner, I suppose. But it suits them. It's what they are now. Gone," I explain. I lookup at him and he is smiling at me.

"For a fifteen year old you got a tremendous vocabulary and way of seeing the world," he says, still smiling.

"You're telling me. Look who's talking," I say.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Jim. The last one, actually.