Meet Me

Chapter 4 - After

Two years later

Trudging through the woods, I looked around for somewhere where Luisa, Owen and I could spend the night safely. We had stayed together throughout the whole apocalypse. Owen and Luisa were no longer a couple, because we had discussed what we would do if it came down to one of us being a zombie. None of us wanted to become a zombie, obviously, and if we did, didn’t want to stay one as long as we had to. We had agreed that if one of us was unlucky enough to receive a bite, we would kill them as soon as they woke again. It was dangerous, but we had all made the promise. Luisa and Owen thought that if they were together and had to something like that, they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves.

I had become the group leader. I didn’t know how or when, but Owen and Luisa relied on me. I didn’t rely on anybody because sooner or later we were all going to die. I wouldn’t mind if it were from old age, however. The thought of becoming undead sent a shiver through my spine.

I had seen what zombies did to people. They pulled them down and sliced open their heads and bodies with their sharp claws, which they grew over very little time, and ate whatever they wanted to eat. If their saliva got into its victims blood, which it always did, the victim would soon become an undead, rotting corpse that was often nothing more than bone and a few pieces of skin clinging onto a rotting corpse. Sometimes, they had a few strands of hair or, if the zombie that killed them wasn’t really hungry, they would have been able to keep all their hair as the skin would still be on their head or face. Their brains remain: sometimes half, sometimes one quarter, sometimes fully. If they were lucky, they got to keep their eyes. Their hearing improves immensely, from what I had seen, when they turned. From what I understood, all the other senses had been eliminated.

They killed in cold blood. Filthy cold blood. I had never seen somebody I knew become a zombie. I had never seen anybody I knew as a one, either. I hoped I never did. It wouldn’t make a difference if it were somebody I knew. I only knew one thing: Kill on sight. I had lost all emotions during the process of killing abomination after abomination. I didn't hesitate to kill them and I didn't feel any ounce of guilt. If somebody I loved was one, I would kill them. I was an emotional wreck, not that I knew it. All the time. Now, there were no emotions dragging me down.

When it happened, I had been wearing denim shorts and tights with a black tank top and Luisa had been wearing jeans and her favorite T-Shirt which read ‘go hard or go home bro!’ We hadn’t taken anything else with us except the food. We both thought we would be able to go back there someday, but no such luck.

We had all become wild and we could no longer be tamed. It had just been too long. Each of us had acquired a gun. We had broken into a hunting shop and taken whatever we felt we needed three years ago.  We collected bullets from whoever we came across by shooting them, retrieving the bullet we had used, and then take theirs. We also took whatever we could find, which could be useful, from zombies we had killed who still had clothing. Luisa had never used hers, because she was still the most innocent out us all.

She had been the one who was vomiting while Owen and I searched bleeding bodies. I couldn’t blame her, her nature was too sweet for this life, but I wouldn’t let her die. She was my oldest and only friend and she deserved more than to be shot in the head without having a chance. If it were somebody else, I would’ve shot them in the head, even if it were my own parent. They just slowed us down. We allowed no strangers to join our group, as they could want to kill us or use us to save themselves in a zombie attack.

What I was doing now was barely living. It was surviving. There is a difference between the two. I didn’t know where I was or who I would come across. Or what. The Earth had started to give up and was starting to look how apocalypses are described in books, but with more forest and less life. The Earth had stopped letting grass grow, so once it was gone, it was gone. Sometimes, we resulted to eating grass if it was the last possibility for a meal.