Surviving in Chaos

Family First

I was running in the dark on the unlighted streets, through the pouring rain. Water had gotten into my eyes blurring my vision but I could not stop running. Panting hard, I could feel the ache in my thighs from running so much but I had to keep moving fast. I turned into an alley hoping there would be a place to hide. My clothes clung to my body uncomfortably and the rain felt heavy coming down on me, as if it was pushing me to give up and lay on the ground. I heard footsteps splashing the water puddles that had been gathered on the ground behind me. I ran into a brick wall. Frantically, I tried to open doors of the houses next to me but they were all locked.

I turned around to see my brother, my father, my mother, and Blake charging at me. Their eyes all had that dead look and blood was strewn over all their tattered clothing. I dodged as my brother and father threw their bodies at me and tried my hardest to push my mum's head away from my left arm that she was gripping on. Blake tackled me mid body, forcing me to hit the cold, wet ground hard, losing my breath. His beautiful face lifted up to look at mine and for a moment, he was just Blake, about to kiss me. But as his lowered his mouth, it became bloody and I smelled the rotten smell as not only him, but everyone pounced on me.

Bathed in sweat, I jerked up from the dream, disoriented again by my surroundings. I tried to catch my breath as I observed the group sleeping soundly, their snores rhythmic. While it had been nice staying here, I really needed to look for my parents and to think I had spent the night dancing away! They could have become zombies by now! I felt guilty that perhaps subconsciously, I had given up on them when they didn’t answer my calls, but I chose to ignore it.

Blake was still snoozing soundly in a sleeping bag, at the other side of the study area with his family surrounding him. I thought of telling him my plans but decided that it was for the best if I had left on my own and we did not see each other again. I liked him but then I cared to admit but it was not right to think of him in that way, he was just being a good friend.

I put on my Nike track shoes, and plugged my phone out from its charger. It was fully charged and ready to go. I had almost successfully made it to the door when he called my name. Sighing, I turned around to face him. Blake had gotten out of bed, shirtless, exposing his chiselled toned chest and eight packs and was making his way towards me. I tried not to drool as I imagined what it would be like to touch him. It was not fair that God made some people so good looking while the rest of us struggled. “Where are you going?”, he yawned, covering his mouth with his hand.  His rumpled hair and sleepy expression was so adorable that I wanted to smooth his hair with my hands. I whispered, “I need to look for my family, I know you can’t risk it. But I don’t have much to lose so I guess I will just leave your group, and look for them myself”

“No, wait, it’s too dangerous.” He rubbed his face trying to shake off the sleep. “I will drive you around, I mean Singapore’s pretty small isn’t it?” I stared at him trying to judge if he was serious. He squinted his blood shot eyes at me. “Promise?” I asked. He nodded. “Now, let me get more sleep first.” He walked back to his sleeping bag and fell face first into it, back into sleep.

I stared at his sleeping form, his exposed back muscles, considering whether to wait. A few hours would not have made much of a difference right? If he broke his promise, I could have sneaked out later. As I climbed up to the rooftop to watch the sun rising, I thought of just how crucial time could be. My family was in grave danger, but I had to admit that I could not have had left the school alone, confident of survival. I just had to trust him.

2 hours later, we were sitting in the car, with Blake yawning. “Where’s your house?” he asked in between yawns. We were at Hougang in under half an hour. The roads were very empty. Everywhere was familiar, yet different at the same time. So much had changed in a day. When we reached my block, we sat in the car in silence. Going up to my house, meant climbing up staircases that may or may not have been empty, narrow corridors that would have been difficult to escape from. I had to know if they had managed to get home, if that was their safe haven, if this hope that I was harbouring about their safety was pointless.

Blake took out two pen torchlights from his black backpack that he had packed and tossed one to me. Then, he carefully unwrapped two kitchen knives from a cloth before giving me one of them. Seeing my nervous expression, he reached over and covered one of his hands over mine, squeezing tightly. I smiled, took a deep breath and nodded my head. “Let’s go”

The void deck was quiet and empty unlike how it was usually, where people would have been walking around with the casual chatter. We took soft steps to be as quiet as we could as we headed to my apartment’s lift landing and took the stairs. I lived on the sixth floor. It was going to be an agonizing climb. The first three levels were cleared successfully but on the fourth floor, we heard a howling. Sweat beaded on our foreheads as we waited for the howling to quiet down. When the noise had finally stopped, we climbed up to the flight of stairs only to find a zombie on the fifth floor, standing still along the corridors, facing our direction. This zombie was horrendous. Its face was completely torn off and wearing a dirty white singlet and FBT shorts. Its chest seemed to have been hollowed out, with innards dangling. It started running towards us but I refused to run, tired of running and being afraid.

I ran up the stairs towards him with my knife. It tried to bite my arm as I reached the last step but I stepped out of the way, and it rolled down the flight of stairs towards Blake and landed in a heap at the bottom with a loud crack, its head positioned oddly. Blake took his knife and plunged it into its head twice, spattering some blood over his face. He took out a blue handkerchief from his jeans pocket and wiped it off.

We managed to get to the sixth storey without any further encounters. When I saw my apartment’s gate, one side of it was hanging on its hinges and I swallowed hard, trying to understand the implication of that. My heart sank as I felt my hope for my parents crumble. My house was a mess. The living room table had been upturned, the television glass was cracked and family portraits that used to be hanging, were scattered all over the floor.

There was no sign of that anyone still inhabited the apartment. We began to explore the house. The kitchen and storeroom was had been left relatively untouched and Blake packed quite a number of food supplies from there into his bag. I should have stopped him because my parents, if they had been still alive, might have come back for it but I could not. He was doing me a big favour and I owed him.  Next, we explored the bedrooms. Bed sheets were strewn all over the place and so were accessories, clothes and everything else. I found my favourite snowflake necklace that was given to me on my sweet sixteen birthday party and put it on. Everything else did not seem to matter anymore.

My parents’ bedroom was in the worst state. There was a splatter of blood on the sheets crumpled on the floor, meaning that they might have been attacked and struggled to get out. There was no other sign that they could have been there. Where are you? I thought desperately. Please call me again.