Is This The End Of Us? Or Just The Means To Start Again? (Jalex)

Not Good Enough

Pointing our guns at everything that moves, we make our way through the abandoned city back towards the high way I’d been on the day previously.

“It’s too quiet” Jack says. “We saw so many yesterday, where could they all have gone?”

“As long as they’re away from me, I don’t care” Tay says.

“I wouldn’t bank on it just yet” I say, my voice cracking.

“What is it Alex?” Jack asks, shakily I point back and towards the masses of zombies than seem to spilling out of the edge of the city.

“Fuck!” Jack yells.

“What do we do?”

“Run!”  I yell. We run, dodging old cars that would be too far gone to start now we just run until we can’t anymore.

“What....What can you see?” Tay asks breathlessly. Peering behind us, I look for any sign of the living dead but all I see in the road we’d been running on. We’ve left the city behind now, into the open of the highway with all trees and an old as station around us.

“Nothing” I say.

“Maybe we’ve finally out run them” Jack says, and for a moment we think it’s true until we hear a scream.

“TAY!” a group of zombies obviously out of the old as station are surrounding us, one has her arm and is trying to pull her to him.

“HELP” she screams.

“You get Tay, I’ll fight these guys off” Jack says, with a blast from his shotgun.

“Okay” I agree shakily.

“GUYS” she screams again as the zombies grab and try to bite her.

“I’m coming” I yell back. I line up my gun with the nearest one, and pull the trigger. The shock of the gun going off knocks me backward a few steps, but I did it the zombie is backing away with a wound in its shoulder. Zombies don’t bleed but this sort of black shit comes out of them. Tay continues to struggle and fight but another zombies comes from behind her and grabs her around the middle; lifting her small frame from the ground.

“Tay!” I call out, trying to fight my way towards her.

“Alex” she calls, I reach out and just mange to grab hold of her hand, it’s covered in blood from a wound on her arm.

“Go” she whispers. “It’s too late for me, you have to go. Safe yourselves” it’s the last words I hear her say before she’s ripped away from me.

“TAY” I scream but it’s too late, they’re dragging her away from me.

“Alex” there’s a yell from behind me, Jack is almost wresting a zombie off him. Without thinking I take my gun and shoot the fucker.

“Thanks” he says, breathlessly. He sees the tears in my eyes and his smile fades.

“Tay?” he asks, I shake my head as the tears start running onto my cheeks. As the zombies thin out we make a run for it, saving ourselves but leaving her and ‘home’ behind.  

 

We’re not running long before I have to stop, standing at the side of the road and throwing up the small amount of food I’ve eaten in the last few hours. Jack puts his arm around my shoulder in attempted at comfort.

“They took her Jack.... I tried I really tried but they took her” I sob.

“I know Alex, I know you tried your best”

“Well it wasn’t fucking good enough” I snap, looking at the tears in his own eyes.

“Come on we need to find somewhere to stop for the night, we don’t want to be wondering around in the dark” he says, ignoring my statement.

“What so we don’t die too?” Jack grips my hands, his fingers ruff but somewhat comforting. Jack leads me down a side road and into what seems to be a small town, abandoned houses lie before us like empty shells.

“Pick one” he says.

“That one” I point to the house on the end o the row, it has a white fence at the front with a still somewhat neat garden and tall bushes on either side.

“It reminds me of the house out of Edward Scissorhands”

we carefully walk down towards it, just in case a visitor jumps out to met us but luckily nothing does. Jack kicks the back door in and we enter the house. It’s nice, well furnished and even a king sized bed. I’ve not slept in a bed well since everything started.

“Well it’s not 5-star” Jack jokes.

“But it’s better than I’ve seen in mouths” I smile, a prober smile.

We make our little came in the front room with blankets we find in a closet and the little stove, heating up our cans of food and sitting on the old couches.

“How much did you know about her?” I ask, we’ve been sat in silence for awhile and I finally break it with a question that’s been nagging at me. I just let this girl name and I barely knew her name. 

“She was called Taylor Jardine, she was sixteen and from New York. It has just her and her mum after her dad died when she was young. As you know she was on tour with her band We Are The In Crowd when it started, she never found out what happened to her mum, but I think she knew. The zombies took them by surprise, they had no time to prepare that only Tay survived”

“She was sixteen? Sixteen and I practically killed her” I start sobbing again, tears running down my already red face.  

“Shit no Alex you didn’t kill her, you weren’t the person who took her away, and you were trying to save her” Jack tries to reassure me.

“But I failed to save her, that’s as good as condemning her to death”

“Alex, don’t blame yourself for this. If she was here now she’d laugh at the mess you are” I laugh at that, she probably would do.

We watch the light leave the sky, until we’re sitting in darkness. Deciding it’s pointless to stay up when there’s a real bed waiting for us we both leave our things and for the first time in mouths claim the stars to bed.

“I call the left side!” Jack calls from the top of the stairs.

 

“No fair” I fake hurt and Jack laughs. Getting into the right side of the bed, I pull the duvet tight around me despite the heat of the room and close my eyes knowing that I couldn’t save Tay like I couldn’t save Lisa.