Keep Your Eyes Open

What Now?

Unedited

The feeling of someones lips against mine woke me up. My eyes vaguely opened to see Harri's face close to mine.

'Morning,' he said, his breath brushed against my face.

'Morning,' I said, my voice croaky and dry. 'How come no zombies attacked?' I said, sitting up slowly.

'I don't know, but we haven't heard anything since we've been up, there is no sign of them around here,' he answered.

'Where are the others?'

'Getting food.'

'From where?'

'School.' I stood up.

'What the fuck?! They could die! Why did you let them go?!'

'It was their decision not mine, there is enough of them to fend off any zombies.'

'They have javelins,' I said, the feeling of worry engulfed me.

'It killed the other five that were after us.'

'Yes, but there may be more.'

'Babe, Tabitha,' he said, standing up, he took hold of my shoulders, 'they'll be fine.' I nodded my head. He pulled me in for a hug and I accepted it, burying my face into his neck. I retreated and sat down.

'How long have they been gone?'

'Ten minutes or so,' he said, sitting down next to me and putting his hand on my knee.

'I hope they return, and I hope they return with food 'cause I'm starving.'

'I hope so too.' He started making small circles on my knee with his thumb whilst my sweaty school uniform begged to be changed.

'We need to get out of the woods soon, we can't survive in our school uniform much longer,' I said, looking down at my skirt, tights, blouse, and cardigan. I had abandoned my shoes long ago, all they were doing was slowing me down.

'We can't survive here much longer anyway.'

'I wonder if Mac is still alive, I wonder if my brother and mum and dad are...'

'Your first concern is Mac?' He asked, looking at me weirdly, but amusement filled his voice.

'No, I declared my family dead last night, Mac wasn't included, he's probably just worried where we are. I just don't know if my family are still alive,' I felt my throat begin to stiffen the way it used to do whenever I felt like crying. 'But let's move on. Is it safe to go outside?'

'As safe as it can be I guess, why?'

'I want to show you something,' I took his hand and lead him to the door. Opening the door with caution, I looked out. Not a zombie in sight. I was still cautious as I lead him to my tree. I began to climb. 'No looking up my skirt, follow me.' The feeling of the bark seemed so familiar to my skin, I continued to climb, keeping three points of contact at all time. I got to my branch. I moved further along than I usually did in order for Harri to sit next to me.

'Is this it?' He asked.

'What do you mean "is this it?" It's my tree! My safe place, my quiet place,' I purposefully looked dramatically towards another tree.

'Ha-ha! Well, if it's special to you then I'm privileged to be here,' he said grinning a cheeky grin.

'Do you hear that?' The sound of talking was growing louder every second. It was joyful talking, though.

'Should we scare them?' Harri asked, entertainment evident in his voice.

'When they have javelins? I don't think so, I want to survive at least a week,' I said, 'now let's go down and meet them, they'll worry when they find out we're not in the shelter.' He moved over to the trunk of the tree and started climbing down, I followed suite. I heard Harri jump and his feet landing on the ground. I cautiously climbed all the way down to the ground, deciding not to trust myself with anything too risky that day.

'Ohlo,' Vaseva greeted, laughing slightly. Beth, Adrianna, and Annalyse laughed along with Vaseva. I managed to let out a small giggle.

'Did you bring food?'

'Yes, yes we did,' Beth said, holding up two packets of bread in one hand, and a packet of juice bottles in the other. Vaseva and Annalyse also had food and drinks, Rhys and Tom held various knives and rope from the Gym, Prasan held the javelins, and Lennon held some discuses.

'Did you guys encounter any zombies?'

'A few,' Lennon said, Prasan holding up a few bloodied javelins, 'but they've all gone somewhere else, there are barely any there anymore.'

'I wonder why that is...' I said, trailing off; no ideas had formed as to why there weren't very many zombies anymore.

'Oh! We forgot to tell you, Lennon killed Jimaima,' Adrianna said, laughing manically.

'Even so, she was still a person,' I said.

'Yeah, but she wasn't, was she? She was a zombie when we killed her so technically she ain't human,' Tom said sarcastically.

'Shall we eat food now?' Harri said.

'Yeah, everyone, to the shelter!' Vasvea started walking a certain walk that only a person like Vaseva could do. We laughed and followed. She opened the door and walked to the far corner, Beth following her. Everyone else filed in.

'Shall we eat some bread with some butter that we found? We need to ration the food,' Adrianna asked.

'Yeah why not,' Tom said, moving so that he was next to Adrianna. We passed the bread around and the butter followed. Rhys found a small, feeble butter knife among the sharp knives. As the knife came round to me, I suddenly felt very self conscious, what with people watching me and some waiting for me to finish. I quickly and messily spread the butter onto my two slices of thin bread and quickly passed on the knife and butter to Harri. I brought the bread up to my mouth and bit into it.

As I swallowed the last mouthful of bread, I was only reminded about the fact we have limited food supply that we needed to ration.

'Soooo, what now?' Lennon asked.

'Oo! We could play hide and seek!' Vaseva said, putting her hands up in an excited way.

'Noooo, that's boooring,' Lennon said.

'And we could get killed,' I added, 'sorry...' I felt blood rushing to my cheeks. Harri put his hand on mine in a comforting way. 'We could travel back to Herford now that we have supplies.'

'Yeah, but how are we supposed to get there?' Tom asked, sick of my 'stupid' ideas.

'My dad taught me the basics of driving...' I said, trailing off, my throat closing up with the mention of my dad.

'Where are we supposed to find a car?'

'On the road. Have you seen how many cars and vans and lorries drive up and down that main road? I'm assuming they will still have petrol and the keys in the ignition because if you think about this logically, when people see zombies running they usually think ditch everything and run. So, therefore, the cars should be able to function if people left them as they were.'

'She has a point,' Vaseva said encouragingly.

'We need to take a vote on it though,' Tom said, still unsure of the idea.

'Fine, all I'm favour of going to my house my hijacking a car.' Annalyse, Adrianna, Vaseva, Beth, Rhys, Prasan, Lennon and Harri all put their hands up. 'Majority wins,' a smirk spreading across my face. 'We need to go scout out a suitable car. A van would be better though.'

'I'll go,' said Rhys.

'I'll go with you.' Harri raised his hand.

'Well, I'll come with you two,' I said.

'What should the rest of us do?' Lennon asked.

'Entertain yourselves. Don't get killed,' I replied. I stood up to leave, Rhys and Harri followed my action. I waved goodbye and walked outside. When Harri and Rhys came out, they both held javelins in their hands.

'Let's go then,' Harri said. He took my hand as we started our search for a car.

A/N

Sorry I took so long to update guys, I haven't had internet for ages.

But thank you for over ten reads already!