Whatever It Takes: Mutations

Chapter Eight

Bryan Ferguson 

October 1st, 2:46 pm

Current Location: Baltimore, MD

--------------------------------------------------------------

Bryan. 

If you don't remember him from the previous story, Bryan was a really good friend of mine back in Flordia, before everything went south. He was probably my best friend; the only trustworthy guy I knew in Panama City High School. 

I remember it like it was yesterday. We were sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch one day with Bryan, myself, and a few other boys that I knew but didn't talk to much. 

"Hey, J," Bryan started, with his head stuck in his phone. "Should I try out for the swim team?" 

I laughed, halfway expecting it to be a joke. He was the clown of the group after all. "Haha, what? The swim team? Nobody does that man, and you know it." 

He shrugged, still surfing through his social media page. A second later, he looked up at me with a cheeky smile and said, "I dunno. I just thought that it could be a great opportunity to show off these bad boys." Bryan then began to flex his nonexistent muscles in a boasting manner, but I couldn't help but laugh. The other people that were sitting with us laughed as well. 

Now that none of those people were around anymore, I could say that I was also pretty jealous of him. His hilarious personality won over girls, made him pretty popular, and all that. I never cared about most of it, since he never rubbed it in our faces, and that was why I was best friends with him. 

I shook my head vigorously to snap myself out of the flashbacks. My phone was still sitting in my hand, buzzing softly. I quickly answered before I missed it. 

"Hello? Bryan?" 

"Jeremy? You're alive?"

------------------------

Five months earlier

--------------------------

Bryan was surprised he lasted this long. Since the apocalypse started, he's lost so many people so quickly. His brother, who never returned home when he left to find food, water, and medical supplies. His grandfather, who was brutally killed in a Raider attack. Most importantly, both of his parents were killed by Clickers. That meant he was left to literally nothing. No parents, no brother, nobody to talk to. 

Except for Amelia. 

A few days after his parents were killed, he was still in Flordia at the time of his rescue. At the time, he was starving. Bryan was constantly changing the rags he used to at least slow down the blood from the bullet wound. He was stuck to drinking polluted water from the bay area in Pensacola. To put it simply, he was completely miserable. Maybe even depressed. 

As he was walking to his shelter, which was nothing more than an old barn, he heard a vehicle approaching behind him. This was actually right before the bombs, and he knew that the military would gun down anything that even resembled a zombie. That meant his scrawny self as well.  

So Bryan began to run. He ran for his life. He even ignored the voices that called out to him, that told him to stop. The starving sixteen-year-old boy ran as if he stole a piece of bread that he desperately needed to survive. Bryan heard the truck speed up to get closer to him, and he looked back for a second, and he could see who was in it. 

Bryan screeched to a sudden halt. They weren't military at all. The people looked just as terrified as he was. A few seconds later, the driver, who looked to be a woman in her late twenties, slowly climbed out of the door. She looked all around her, probably checking for spore clouds, which there didn't happen to be any at the time.