Chapter 2: Chapter 1 Summer
I am running down an empty, horribly destroyed, city street. There are bodies all around me. "Jason, where are you!" I yell as I round a corner. I am immediately met with a large group of what I think are zombies, among them is Jason and my parents. I scream at the sight of them and turn around to run away but before I am able to get away I am tackled to the ground. I look up and see Jason starring down at me with blood in his teeth and a crazed look in his eyes. He pins me down and starts snarling and lunges at me. I am fighting to get away from him, but he won't let me go. Just before he bites me I wake up. I sit up in bed gasping and struggling to catch my breath. Tears are pouring down my face. I tell myself "It's only a dream." I lay down and go back to sleep.
It's a reoccurring dream that I've had for almost three years. Maybe it's trying to tell me something. Maybe I should tell someone about it … then again maybe I won't. The last thing I need is more therapy or more pills. It's just a dream, … right?
I grew up in a small town in Michigan named Vermontville. I remember that this year was hotter than usual, and we had a drought. The trees were covered in wilted leaves, and the grass was brown. We were going to celebrate my birthday tomorrow. We had finished setting up for the party and had sat down to watch "Dawn of the Dead", it was one of my favorite movies. I remember thinking "That will never happen", when the TV cut to an emergency broadcast about a city wide quarantine, but it didn't specify what for. A few minutes later the TV went to static and then the screaming and the gunshots started.
The news had been reporting a rash of illnesses from all over the country, that appeared to be some sort of viral infection, that was thought to be some sort of flu. Though at the time no one really thought that this outbreak was any different.
… … … …
"I am hear outside of University of Michigan Hospital where the military has put up barricades to prevent people from entering." The reporter say.
"You need to back away ma'am." A solder says.
The reporter begins questioning a doctor from the CDC, who was wearing a biohazard suit, about the illness. "Do you know what this virus is?" The reporter asks.
"It's just the flu." The doctor says.
"If it's just the flu, then why are you wearing a biohazard suit?" She asks.
"We don't have a lot of information at this time. We are not sure how contagious this virus is, so we are just taking extra measures to prevent it from spreading." The doctor says.
What is the condition of the patients?" The reporter asks.
"They are doing well, and we expect them to make a full recovery." The doctor says.
"Is this the same virus that has been plaguing other parts of the world?" She asks as the doctor starts to walk away.
"I'm not aloud to discuss that with you at this time." The doctor says.
"Should we be worried about this virus spreading?" She asks.
"No further questions." The doctor says, then walks away very quickly.
"It appears that the doctors here have nothing new to… There appears to be some commotion coming from inside the hospital." The reporter says.
"You need to get out of here right now!" The solder yells. A few of the patients run out of the hospital, one of them attacks a solder, the other solders start shooting at the patients, but they just keep moving.
"It appears that some of the patients from the hospital have escaped and began attacking the solders." The camera man starts to get nervous. "Jerald, what's the matter with y …" The reporter is interrupted by a patient who bits her on the neck. The cameraman drops the camera and runs. The patient who was biting the reporter looks up and then runs after him. The camera focuses on the puddle of blood that had begun to grow around the reporter's head. A few seconds later the cameraman screams.
… … … …
We couldn't believe it but the impossible happened. The Zombie Apocalypse. A semi-truck, driving at full speed with its horn blasting, crashes through the house next to ours, where my friend Rachel lived, sending debris flying every direction possible, a large explosion followed shortly after. We stand in our living room stunned at what had just happened. I was crying so loudly that I was attracting the attention of some very unpleasant guests.
Our neighbor, Mr. Morton, busted through the sliding glass door, causing glass to fly everywhere. The first thing that my dad noticed was that his eyes were solid black, then he noticed there was blood coming out of his eyes, nose and mouth. The last thing that he noticed was that his skin was very pale and all of his veins were dark. He stands there hunched over, twitching and making these strange grunting and choking sounds.
"James, are you ok?" My dad asks, with a little hesitation. He takes a couple of steps towards him.
Mr. Morton doesn't answer. He lets out this demonic sounding roar, then snarls and sprints towards us. My Dad grabs a knife and runs in front of us and shoves him back. He falls, like a drunk man, to the floor. He springs to his feet and sprints towards us again.
"Stay back. Stay away James." My dad says. He runs at us again. My dad holds him back. "Stop, James … Don't make me do this!" He yells. I remember the shock on my dads face when James started saying "I'm gonna get ya." He kept repeating it over and over again. The only other thing he said to us was, "I'm gonna tear your faces off."
"What the fuck is wrong with you, James! Just calm down! … Please Stop!" My dad yells while fighting with him.
He continues scratching, snarling and trying to bite my dad, he has no choice but to stab him. He stabs him 2 or 3 more times but he still doesn't stop. James then knocks my dad to the floor, causing the knife that he had in his hand to slid across the floor, James gets close to my dad with his teeth still snapping in his face. He was so close to my dad that I thought for sure he was going to bite him. My dad fumbles for the knife that he had dropped, he manages to reach it, and has no choice but to stab him in the head and he falls limp on top of my dad. We all look at each other with overwhelming shock and horror at what had just happened.
"What do you think happened to him?" Jason asks.
"I have no idea son, but are you guys ok?" My dad asks.
We all look at each other. "Yeah, we're fine" My mom says.
My dad says, "Ok good, I am going to check on his family, you guys should gather up as much food and other supplies as you can. I will help you when I get back."
"But shouldn't we go to the store and gather up as much food as we can carry?"
"No, Jason. Everyone will be doing that, it would be a blood bath, and I don't want to see you or your sister get hurt."
… … … …
My dad stumbles back through the door a short time later covered in blood. "What happened Dad?" Jason asks.
"I had to … They were …" He buries his face in his hands and begins to sob. As he sobs, the memories of what he had to do to that family replay in his head.
He didn't have to finish his sentence because we all knew what he was trying to say. I couldn't stop crying. His daughter was one of my friends. Now that I think about it, it's kind of ironic that the we were watching a movie about the zombie apocalypse, and then it actually happened. I remember thinking "There is no way that that could ever happen," but, it did.
"It's ok honey, I'm sure that they are all together on the other side." My mom says, trying to comfort me. It kind of made me feel better when she said that, but I was still really sad.
We finished packing and went to the attic. Some of the food we grabbed had to be cooked in order to eat it, and we did not grab anything to cook with. We went to sleep that night with empty stomachs. But I couldn't sleep, so I went down to the kitchen and gathered up some stuff to cook with. A pot, a big spoon, I filled a milk jug with water, I found some matches, a lighter, newspapers, and magazines and went back up to the attic. My parents were awake when I got back.
"Are you stupid! Do you want to get eaten by those things!" My dad said, with a grim look on his face.
They were not happy until they saw what I had in my hands. They hugged and apologized for yelling at me, then they asked my brother if he wanted food and of course he said "Yes". We had Mac and cheese.
"I can't believe that this has happened." My Dad says.
"Well at least we were prepared for it." I say.
"We were preparing for a nuclear attack, Not the zombie apocalypse!" My Dad says angrily.
"Well at least we have a lot of food and water, most people don't even have that." Jason says.
"Yeah, I suppose that's better than nothing, I just wish that I knew that this is what would happen, because we would have prepared for this instead." My Dad says.
… … … …
In the beginning the military went door to door handing out gas masks. I guess they thought it would help keep the spread of the infection at a minimum, but they were wrong. It didn't take them long to realize that the virus wasn't airborne. The water had been contaminated. Every time you took a drink of water or took a shower you risk infection.
The military announced symptoms of the infection, and how the infection is spread from person to person. A scratch, a bite, even a drop of their blood that's all it takes. After that, there is no hope for you. There is no cure to this nightmare, and nobody is immune. They told all the remaining people to stop drinking tap water Some people have a stronger resistance to the virus like my family, well the waterborne virus anyway.
It was hard to sleep that first couple of weeks. All you could hear was people screaming, gun shots, and the inhuman screams of the dead. We stayed hidden in the attic of our house for a week, at least I think it was a week, its hard to tell the difference between day and night with no windows to see outside. The whole time telling ourselves that the military would handle it, and that someone would come to rescue us, but no one ever did. So, we stayed as quiet as we could and waited until the screaming stopped. Then for the first time in about a week we went downstairs, and were instantly overcome with shock at how much the world had changed in such a short amount of time.
I remember hearing a girl outside crying, so I tell my dad about it and he doesn't do anything. So I decided to go down and help her. "Where are you going? my dad asks.
"I'm going to help that girl outside, she's crying and needs our help and you won't help her so I will." I say.
"You can't go out there, it's a trick, she'll kill you." My Dad says.
"No she won't she's just scared and I'm going to let her know that she is not the only one left." I say with a little anger in my voice.
"Wait, look." My Dad says pointing toward her. She was hunched over and twitching. I remember thinking "That's a little odd." A man comes out of his house to help her.
"Ma'am, it's ok I'm here to help." He says. She continues to cry and says "Help me," so he gets a little closer and says "Its ok, I'm here to help." He reaches towards her to put a hand on her shoulder but before he does she stops crying and spins around like a blur and jumps on him and sinks her teeth into his neck, he let out the loudest scream I had ever heard which attracted more of them. I watched in horror as they tore him apart. The only thing left of him was a very large puddle of blood, and a few bits of flesh and bone that they hadn't eaten.
My dad looks at me and says, "That could have been you, next time I say something you better listen." It was then that I then realized that they were smart. They were not the normal slow moving zombies, that you see in the movies, they were really fast.
After a few days, the only sound left was car alarms from the dead bumping into a car and setting it off. That was the safest time to go look for survivors because all the nearby zombies would be attracted to the sound.
We went from house to house looking for survivors. We would knock on the door, and if no one answered then we would enter the house and call out to anyone who might be inside. If we didn't find anyone then we would search the house for anything useful. I felt bad about looting the houses.
"What's wrong Alice?" My dad asks.
"I don't want to steal from people, dad." I say
"I know honey but we have to take this stuff to survive." He says.
"But what if they come back?" I ask.
"Most likely they won't." He says
"But what if they do? Shouldn't we leave a note or something to tell them where their stuff is?" I ask.
"Well it couldn't hurt to leave a note." He says, thinking to himself, "They're already dead."
During our search we found a couple of other families and a dog named Gina. It started to get dark so we lead everyone back to our house. We offered them food and water and told them they were welcome to stay as long as they wanted. We also told them that we were going to look for more survivors in the morning and they could help if they wanted.
One person that we found was a boy who was a couple of years older then me. His name was Jeremiah. My dad had to kill a couple of zombies to get to him. He didn't say anything for that first week or so that we were in the attic, and he hardly ate anything.
We found several more people during our search, another boy named Sam. His house had burned down with his parents trapped inside. He took shelter in a car until he heard my dad talking. Our group now had a total of 15 people. But now there were too many people in our group to fit them in our attic so we went back to our house and gathered up anything of use. I gathered up some other stuff, like books, sketchbooks, journals, art supplies and clothes.
While we packed up, My dad took the car to look for a bigger vehicle.
"Take Gina with you so that she can warn you if there is danger." My mom said.
"That's a good idea maybe she can give me a little more warning that there are zombies or people nearby." My Dad says in response to what mom said.
While we waited for my dad to return we did one last sweep of the neighborhood in an attempt to find anyone who may have returned to their house to retrieve their belongs. Sadly we didn't find anyone.
He drove past the middle school and found a school bus that was big enough to fit everyone and our supplies on it. He brought it back to the house and we all gathered up our supplies and loaded onto the bus.
"Alice, take some people with you and gather everything from our shelter. Don't leave anything, and make it fast because I don't know how much longer the dead will be distracted."
"Okay, dad." I say.
After we finished gathering the supplies from the secret room in our basement, we returned to the school to search for anything of use and survivors, we didn't find anyone, but we did find some food in the cafeteria, snacks, fruit and a lot of water. Before we left the school we siphoned gas from the other buses and vehicles.
The rest of the week was spent looking for supplies, people, and a safe place that was large enough for everyone. I saw a library during our search.
"Can we stop at the library dad? Please?" I ask.
"Fine but make it fast." My Dad says, in an irritated tone.
I went into the library to look for books that might be useful, like books on locale wildlife, and various types of survival books.
… … … …
My dad drove us to some convenience stores and we looked for more food, weapons and supplies. we left the stores to search for more survivors. After that we found a large hotel and made camp at it. The only problem with it was all the zombies. My dad told me and the other kids to stay on the bus while they cleaned out the hotel. They used the abandoned vehicles to block off all the entrances. We unloaded all of our supplies into rooms in the hotel. My parents picked a room for that had two beds so that we could all stay together.
"Oh my god!" My dad yells. My mom, Jason and I rush over to the room that he was standing in front of.
"What is it dad?" I say as I walk around the corner.
"Alice don't come in …!" My dad says, but before he finishes his sentence I am already in the room. I am horrified by what I see. There is a couple laying on the bed next to each other, holding hands, They both have a gun in their other hand. Around their heads is a large puddle of blood. They had self inflicted gunshot wounds to their heads, Then my mom makes a discovery, They had both been bitten.
"I guess that they didn't want to turn so they shot themselves." My dad says.
"Yeah, I guess so. My mom says. "We should bury them."
"Yeah." My dad says.
I think that was probably one of the worst things that I had ever seen. I just couldn't understand how the world had gotten this bad so fast. After my parents finished burying the couple, we did our best to make it a home suitable for us to live in. At this point our group had thirteen people.
We were here for about a week, then the power shut off. Everyone thought that we could handle a situation like this but we were wrong. 50% of the world's population was gone within the first 5 years. And with no one to tend to the fields we soon began to run out of food. People were killing each other over scraps. It was a bloodbath, it was madness, more horrible than your worst nightmare.
… … … …
I was ten years old when the world ended. Too young to grow up, and too young to see all the things that I've seen. One of the worst things that I ever saw was a family all mangled in their house. So much blood, they were torn to pieces. They must have tried to fight back. They took out a few of them from the looks of the scene, but they were clearly out numbered. I can still see them when I close my eyes. My brother Jason, he was eighteen. He had it a little worse then I did. When we left our home town he wanted to check on his girlfriend. When we got to her house, we saw all the people. They had been gunned down. He ran up the stairs to her room, calling her name. He saw her leaning up against the wall in her closet, a blood puddle surrounding her on the wall and floor. She must have tried to hide in her closet. Someone shot her in the head.
It has been eight years since the world was normal. Eight years spent in this hotel, living with the minimum amount of food. You might be wondering how we were able to survive in this hotel for as long as we did, the truth is I guess we were just lucky. My parents raised Jeremiah and Sam, as if they were family. My dad was voted leader of the group I think because he has a natural authority that everyone respects. While we were at the hotel we lost seven people; two to illness and one by their own hands, and the other four left in search of uninfected areas and lost family members. When ever a zombie got too close to us we would send someone out there to take care of it as quickly and as quietly as possible. Our group now had twenty-three people in it.
The next tragedy that hit me and my brother was the death of our parents. They died with in a year of each other, my mom was the first to go. She was always trying to help people. She was working on this guy who got shot in the stomach, she over looked the bit on his shoulder, and he turned before we had time to react. He lunged at my mom and bit her on the neck, there was nothing we could do. She made my dad promise not to let her turn. We stayed with her as long as we could, … then … she quit breathing … and my dad had to shoot her.
A few months later, my dad went, but he died a little differently. My dad was protecting me and my brother from a horde of zombies and was overpowered just as me and my brother escaped through a large hole in the ceiling of a grocery store. The last thing he said to us was "I love you both so much". Then he started yelling at us to run as far away from the area as we could. We got about 50 yards or so away and then heard a single gunshot. We returned to the group with the little bit of food we managed to get. When they saw that our dad wasn't with us they all began to cry, with all the noise we were making, a large group of zombies broke through the barrier and attacked us. But we were able to kill all of them.
We were lucky that no one died but we didn't have a lot of food left, so my brother told us all to pack up everything that was left. With our shelter and our safety compromised we needed to find somewhere else to go because the hotel was no longer safe. So everyone loaded onto the bus and we drove off in search of somewhere else to live.
… … … …
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone