We Are The Survivors Read online

  “What are you doing out here alone?” she asks zipping up her leather jacket to cover her pink shirt. It’s cold, I should have brought a jacket.

  “My parents are gone and I need to pick up my cousin from the airport.” I readjust the duffel bag strap on my shoulder. It’s heavy. I slide my hand up and down the strap. The woman looks at me. I look down at my feet.

  My shoes are worn out and dirty. I was going to buy new ones. I wanted a certain pair of boots at the mall. Mom said that the heel was too high and I wouldn’t be able to walk in them. Mom, was my best friend when I had no one else, she would fix my problems by giving me advice. Tears stream down my face.

  “Hey, are you okay?” the woman asks.

  I hear growling behind me. A hand grabs my shoulder. I turn around, there is a woman zombie with blood dripping down her mouth. She has blonde hair and her eyes are a purplish-green color. She pulls my arm towards her mouth and is snapping her teeth rapidly. She is inches away from my face. I try to pull away causing the bag to fall off my shoulder. The woman gets out of the car, she kicks the zombie in the knee. The zombie goes down with a groan.

  Because I have no choice I get in the car, grabbing the bag as I do. The driver takes off when the other woman gets in the car. She straps on her seatbelt. I do too. The driver looks at me in the mirror.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Rain.” I tuck a strand of loose hair behind my ear. My hair is a mess.

  “That’s a nice name. I’m Dave.” He points to the woman, “This is Nya.” She looks out the window. I look out my window. There are zombies stumbling between the cars, some are banging on people’s windows. “How did this happen?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. The news isn’t telling us.” Dave says.

  I look at the watch on my wrist. It says 7:30. How long did I walk for? I have thirty minutes to get to him. Time went by fast.

  I study the people in the front seat. They could be a couple, maybe even married. I hope they are good people. I had no choice but I’ve always been taught never to get a ride from strangers. The thought of them making a turn and me telling them this is not the way to the airport is scary. I feel uneasiness in my stomach, like I’m going to throw up. If something did happen I have the bat to defend myself with. I’m going to puke. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I look on the floor, nothing dangerous down there. I’ll roll with them until we get my cousin, then we will figure something out.

  Dave looks at Nya, there’s something behind it. I’ve seen my dad look at my mom the same way. Totally in love, smitten. They have to be together. Right? I have to know what that look is because I’m nosy, there is a big difference between crazy stalker look and I really like you look. “Are you two together?” I ask.

  “No, no, no. We’re just really good friends since we were in Junior High.” Nya smooths her braid embarrassed.

  “I just assumed, you guys just seem like a couple.”

  “No.” Nya looks at Dave.

  “Maybe.” He smiles.

  Nya shakes her head. Dave keeps smiling for a few seconds. I get it, she doesn’t want to be in a relationship, he does. They break their awkward gaze.

  They don’t seem capable of harming anyone. They seem like your average young adults. I’ll see how this goes.

  We’re twenty minutes from the airport. We pass more cars in traffic on the right lane going out of Las Vegas. I don’t get worried until we pass cars in traffic with zombies stumbling through the tiny aisles in between still cars. Some of them stop to bang on people’s windows. I hear screaming. People are running into the street in between the cars. The zombies start eating the people.

  I close my eyes tight and turn my head to the left side. I don’t want to see any more people get ripped apart. I see my mom in my mind looking at me crying. I feel the car stop. “Why did we stop?” I ask.

  “Someone’s in the road.” Dave runs his hands through his hair.

  The door to my left opens. I still have my eyes closed. I feel the seat next to me sink. The door shuts. I open my eyes. There’s a boy sitting there, I can see the back of his head because he is looking outside. He has brown hair and he is wearing a black shirt with jeans and green and black sneakers. The sneakers I see every day in school. The car starts going again. “Xavier?” I ask.

  He jumps back surprised by my voice. “Rain.” He smiles.

  “You know each other.” Dave looks in the mirror at us.

  We both say yes at the same time. We smile at the same time. I’m glad he’s alive. He must think the same about me. The only thing is what happened to his parents. He reaches in his pocket; he takes out a photo.

  “Do you know this woman?” he holds the picture up. It’s a picture of him standing next to the woman who got eaten at my house, the one with the baseball bat. “She’s my mom.” He gives me the picture.

  I look at it. How am I supposed to tell him that his mom is dead? I look at him and he is staring at me, waiting for an answer. I recall getting the news that my father was dead.

  I remember picking up the phone in my kitchen on my birthday. A man’s voice told me to put my mom on and I demanded to know who it was. He wouldn’t tell me so I put mom on. I went in mom’s room and picked up the phone while she was in the living room. He said he was a police officer and that Dad was in a car accident. He didn’t make it. I fell to my knees and threw the phone against the wall. It shattered into pieces. Mom came in and instead of yelling at me she hugged me. We both started crying together.

  Is that what I want to see: the boy who always smiles, crying, feeling like his whole world is shattered? He’s getting impatient, shaking his knee up and down waiting for an answer. I look at the picture again. They’re both happy. I can’t tell him how she died. He shouldn’t remember his mom that way. No one should. “No, I haven’t.” I give the picture back to him. He slips it back in his pocket. What else could I say? I lied to him but at least he doesn’t have to know how his mom died. I’ll let him think she’s missing. It’s better to think that she is someplace else and not dead. Maybe it’s not better and I should tell him. I’m in big trouble if he tries to look for her. Will I ever have to tell him the truth?

  He looks out the window then he looks at me. He has brown eyes that make my heart stop and brown hair the same shade as his mother’s. Both those things make me turn away.

  I feel a little guilty smiling and blushing because of him. My mom just got killed which made me kill my stepfather. Now I’m sitting here smiling. What is wrong with me? I should be losing it now, not sitting here acting normal.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Dave asks looking at me in the mirror.

  I look at myself in the mirror. Tears are coming down my face. I didn’t realize I was crying.

  “Your parents. Do you want to talk about it?” Xavier says.

  I shake my head. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to believe it. I just want to get to Gavin and get to an evacuation. Hopefully Gavin knows about the evacuation. I can’t take the risk of him not knowing. If the military is evacuating people where are they taking them?

  I have to call him. It was stupid not to bring my phone. “Do you have a cell phone?” I ask Xavier. He looks at me like I’m crazy. Of course, you have a phone, you’re a teenager who texts all the time, duh.

  “Let me use it I’m picking up a family member, these two are driving me.” I hold out my other hand. He takes his phone out of his right pocket and puts it in my hand. I try to remember his number, when I do I dial it. He answers on the first ring.

  “Who is this?” he says.

  “Hi, it’s Rain, have you heard about the evacuation?”

  “No, what do you mean?” he asks.

  “They didn’t tell you?” Xavier raises an eyebrow. I hold the phone face down against my lap. “The passengers weren’t told about the evacuation.” I put the phone up to my ear.

  “The people are attacking others, eating them. The people are crazed
maniacs, they’re, they’re…” I try to find the right word that will make sense. I don’t have any experience describing undead people.

  Xavier takes the phone out of my hand, which takes me by surprise. He puts it on speaker. “Zombies! The people are zombies, man! You have to convince them to let you land here.”

  “Who are you?” Gavin asks.

  “He’s a friend of mine.” I take the phone back. Xavier looks at me a little disappointed. Maybe he thinks I should have said date but this isn’t the right time to explain any of that.

  What the hell am I going to do? If he tells the passengers the truth, there is a risk of them panicking. This isn’t just his life on the line but the passengers. “Should you tell them?” I ask Gavin.

  “I have to.”

  I hear a bunch of background noise. I hear Gavin tell them about an evacuation because people are freaking out and eating others. I hear yelling and screaming. The line goes dead. I dial the number again and he doesn’t pick up. I text him and I receive a text back:

  People are freaking out. The pilot just told us that we will be going to Vegas. Some people calmed down. The pilot said he has family there and that he will be landing in Vegas. See u soon.

  That’s good. I know where he is going to be. Hopefully everyone chills out until then. We are almost there. Ten minutes until his plane lands. It will only take a few minutes to drive there. I hand Xavier his phone back.

  Xavier is still holding my hand. Our hands are sweaty from being together this long. I let go and wipe my hand on my shirt. I put my hand on my lap and Xavier takes it again. My heart starts racing.

  Maybe him being here is a sign. I didn’t know when he asked me out if we were going to have a relationship afterwards. Him being in the same car as me could be fate or a coincidence. I believe in signs and omens; I believe that God is watching over us all the time.

  My family was Catholic. We went to church on Sunday, with my real dad and stepdad, and followed the Ten Commandments.

  Fred didn’t follow the Ten Commandments obviously. I remember seeing him kneel during service to pray. It was automatic like he did it a hundred times. The thought of him praying in church and then doing what he did to my mom makes me sick.

  Anyways, I always believed in God giving people signs when they need it. I believe this is a sign. The boy I have a crush on being in the same car as me. He could have gotten a ride from anyone else.

  I just wish that God could have given someone a sign of the zombie apocalypse. Then we would all, probably, be prepared. None of us saw this coming aside from doomsday preppers? I didn’t. The thing is how did this start without warning; nobody saw this coming? If they did the military would have evacuated us sooner. Does anyone know the cause? “Hey, do you guys know how this started? I ask.

  Dave looks at me in the mirror. “I woke up to the dead pounding on my door this morning. I heard about evacuation and the attacks on TV. I called Nya and we decided to get to an evacuation site.”

  I look at Xavier. “I heard things on the news about the zombies. Me and my mom barricaded ourselves in the house. One of those things came in and she told me to run. I did, I ran and didn’t look back. I don’t know where she ran to. I don’t know what caused it,” he says.

  If one of those zombies can devour one person a couple of zombies can do much worse. We need weapons to get there. “We need to find weapons.” Everyone except my crush is staring at me.

  Dave smiles. “I like the way you think. There’s a gun store a few miles away. We can get knives, guns, machetes, anything. You know how to shoot a sniper rifle?”

  “No. Should I learn?”

  “That’s a good question.” His smile fades.

  We arrive at the gun store shortly. Dave and Nya made us stay in the car because we’re kids. We would be safer in the car they told us. The both of us are sitting here not talking, holding hands. I’m looking out the window trying not to look too love struck. He breaks the silence before I do.

  “Hey, I have to tell you something.” He rubs the back of his neck and puts his left hand on his lap.

  “What?”

  He leans in closer. I hear a knock on my window behind me. I whip my head around quickly. There is a tall man pounding on my window. He is bald and has a brown goatee. He is dressed in a blue prison jumpsuit. Oh, shit!

  I lean so close into Xavier’s chest I’m almost on his lap. The man pulls on the door handle a couple times. When he realizes, it’s locked he hits the window with the end of the rifle. The glass starts to crack. With the last hit the glass shatters everywhere like there was an explosion. I squeeze Xavier’s hand tightly. He grabs my feet trying to drag me out the window and I start kicking him.

  “Nya!!! Dave!!!” I scream.

  The man unlocks the door from the inside and opens it. He grabs my feet; he drags me out and throws me on the pavement. I can see he is a very tall man. The man points the rifle at Xavier. “Get out or she dies.” He does what he tells him. I stand up. The man points the rifle at us. “You two give me the keys.”

  “We don’t have them,” I say, surprised that I’m talking to a man who is holding me at gun point.

  “Stop messing around with me and give them to me.”

  I form a plan quickly. “Let us go get our people and we will get you the keys.” He jerks his head toward the store allowing us to do that. We both run as fast as we can. I bust through the door and slam it against the wall. Dave and Nya stop to look at us. “A guy has a gun and he wants the car. I will open the door you two shoot.”

  “I like you.” Nya grabs a rifle from the back wall and loads it.

  The store is small. It has three walls filled with guns hanging on them. Dave and Nya are standing behind the showcase in the back center of the room. Nya gives me a thumbs up. I open the left door all the way and stand behind it. Xavier comes with me.

  I close my eyes. He puts his hand on my shoulder. I inhale and hold my breath. A few shots ring out making me tense up. I grip the door handle with both hands tightly.

  “Come out guys,” Nya’s voice reassures me. We handled that well. That’s the second person I killed today not counting the zombie, because I didn’t have a choice with the others, I did with this guy. Even though he must have been an inmate I still feel bad. Maybe I shouldn’t, he was in jail for a reason. He could have been a murderer; he could have been worse.

  We both come out from behind the door. Dave and Nya are carrying two black gun bags each as they walk out of the store. They put the bags in the trunk. The man is lying on the ground with his gun in his hand. He has bullet holes in his stomach. Blood is coming out of his stomach and pooling under him. I walk around to the other door. Xavier opens it for me and gets in.

  Once we start driving I try to make conversation.

  “Where do you guys work?” I ask.

  “At a Chinese food place. It’s called Chen’s Chinese Restaurant,” Nya says.

  “Sounds fun.”

  “They made us wear Cheongsams and chopsticks in our hair as uniforms.” She smiles.

  “I’m going to miss that job.” She sighs.

  “What makes you think that you won’t be working. The military will make things right. They will take care of this mess.”

  Xavier turns to me. “Look, the military will not sort this out. I don’t seem it but my family was big on Doomsday, especially zombies. I don’t think the military is going to clean it up. I think civilization is collapsing and that we need to find a way to survive.”

  He could be right. I hope he’s wrong. The way the world looks outside my window weakens my hope. I rest my head on his shoulder and he puts his arm around me. I feel like the world is broken. What if I never have a normal life again? What will this be like? Do I want to live in a world like this? I lost my father and now my mother. I don’t want to see any more of this. People are running through the streets with the zombies hanging on them. Xavier hugs me tighter.

  I just want to get my cousin and
go home, I mean find a new home.

  CHAPTER TWO-RESCUE MISSION

  Amazingly we made it here to pick up my cousin. We get out of the car. Dave and Nya grab their weapons and get in the elevator. The ride feels like it takes forever. We get out and there are two soldiers standing at the entrance in full soldier gear with sniper rifles in hand, pistols in the holsters on their hips. They pace back and forth in front of the doors. We stand still on the sidewalk and wait for those soldiers on the other sidewalk to notice us. One of them stops pacing and points his gun at us. The other soldier notices and stands beside him to point his gun at us. The soldier on the left is older, in his forties. The one on the right is younger.

  “Stand back!” The older one says.

  We immediately put our hands up. Dave and Nya drop their guns and put their hands up in surrender.

  “I’m here to pick up my cousin.”

  “Sorry, the passengers are getting evacuated. He won’t be here.” The older soldier puts his gun down and motions for his buddy to put his down too.

  “He is. The pilot has family here and he is landing here.” Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

  The two look at each other for a long time.

  The older soldier turns to me finally.

  “Protocol is that we get everyone to a safe place.”

  “So take me, my family and friends,” I say.

  “Okay.” He gives a quick nod.

  I put my hands down and the rest of us do the same. I see people rushing up to the entrance doors. I run up to them. Gavin is the first one I see. He is waving through the glass as he runs up to the door. He opens it and hugs me. The rest of the passengers get through the doors. He pulls back from me and smiles. “I’ve never been this happy to see family before. Where’s aunt Sam and uncle Fred?”

  I don’t say a word I go mute. I’m frozen in time. He shakes his head. Tears well up in his eyes.

  “Both of them?” he asks.

  “Yes. Fred tried to kill us.” The word kill is the hardest to get out.

  “How did you escape?” He looks at my clothes and notices the blood. His expression is one of shock.