Red Zone

Chapter One: I meet death

The sirens blared. Red lights lit up the town and I knew that it meant we have been contaminated. For three whole months we hadn't had a single case of the Z virus. We were supposed to be a safe zone.

How could one of them get in? I pale. Briggs whimpers at the noise outside. I can't blame him, I too am shaking. With trembling hands I lace up my favorite pair of adidas sneakers, and grab my pre-packed bags that lie in my living room.
My throat is tight making each breath I take a wheeze. I look around my house one last time, making sure I didn't miss anything important. The windows are bored up and have nails poking through them in case someone tries to break into my house. Every entrance is boobytrapped so that when the virus is cured my home will be safe from scavengers.

I take a deep breath to steel my nerves as I walk into my parents room. Red light finding it's way into the room through the border windows. I kneel down at the foot of the bed and then I lie on my stomach reaching into the gap between the bed and the floor. I fumble for only a few seconds before my hands land on my Dad's shotgun. A sort of victory whoop goes off in my mind as I feel the cool surface of the box on my finger tips. I search for a couple more seconds until I find the shotgun ammo my Dad kept there too.

Good, I think to myself. Not even a second later I am pushing myself up from the floor and racing to my garage with my cargo in hand. I pack my 3 suitcases, duffle-bag, 2 backpacks, and gun into the back seat of my Dad's truck. I fill the rest of the back seat of the truck with all the cans of gasoline I've had in storage. Lastly I put a sleeping bag and pillow on the mattress in the truck bed and close the cover I put on just 2 weeks ago.

Briggs is whining at me, begging me to let him in the truck, so I open the passenger side door. Check my phone for the last time before I leave. All the cell towers outside of my county went down months ago when the other cities got the virus. And GPS stopped working around the same time when Apple and google headquarters got overrun by infected. I look for my grandpa's old atlas that I put in the glove compartment. I already highlighted all of the routes to the safe zones.

This is it, I think to my self as I climb into the driver's seat, no more playing it safe. I press the button to open my garage door and pull out of the garage. I close it and then I'm off on my way. Normally it would only be a 10 hour drive from my house to Dc, but nothing is normal anymore. In order to get to the safe zone, safely, I'll have to avoid all the major cities. Which will add hours too my drive. The freeway is littered with cars, cars, dead bodies, and the infected.

It only takes a few hours for the virus to change you completely. At first you start ripping out your hair, then you start salivating like crazy, and then you lose all reason finding anyone and anything tasty.

Briggs starts barking at some of the zombies about a mile ahead of us. They sit on the sides of the road ripping the rotting meat of of whatever or whomever they're eating, their heads jerk towards our direction when they hear my truck. With inhuman movement they get up and start running towards my truck. My speedometer reads 80 miles an hour and is climbing as I press my foot down more on the accelerator. I'm only a few seconds away from them when one whose mouth is covered in blood and has a large oozing hole in the side of its cheek stops in front of my lane.  As calmly as I can I switch into the other lane right before I hit it. And then we are past the group of zombies. I slow down a bit. Letting my speed drop to 70 miles an hour. There are only a few other cars on the road. All of them coming from the same place as me, Oak Ridge.

As I continue to drive the scenery melt's together, hours pass and I can feel my eyes drooping. I've been up for too long. The sirens went off at 11pm last night and by now it's 4 in the morning. I sigh. And pull over on the side of the road. I should be fine here. It's over 100 miles to the nearest town from out here and there haven't been any cars on the road for almost as far. I open the tuck door and let Briggs out. He happily jumps out and prances over to some bushes and pees. I opened the tail gait and climbed onto my mattress. I call Briggs over and he jumps up into my make shift room. After I have everything secured and the tail gate closed and locked I let myself drift off into sleep.